How to Setup More Than One Website in a Single, Local Apache 2.2 Installation (with screenshots!)
June 9, 2008 – 5:44 pmIf you did not understand the post title above, allow me to explain in detail. In this tutorial, I will show you how to setup more than one website in a single Apache 2.2 installation . For example, you can have one imaginary website called www.syahid.com plus another one called www.numbertwo.com in one local Apache web server installation. Actually, you can install and setup as many websites as you want inside your computer!
Why on earth do I need this?
There are many usages of this tutorial. One of them is that you may want to run / test many websites locally inside your computer but you don’t want to mess with the website that you have setup and configured previously. Another one is that you may want to test a new version of web-based softwares like Wordpress but want to leave the original version untouched.
What technology did you use to achieve this?
I am going to use Apache 2.2 for this tutorial. To achieve the above objective with the least amount of effort possible, I am going to make use of Apache’s name-based virtual servers capability. This means that all those domain/website names will be pointed to a single, local area network IP address.
To make it even simpler, I will be using the loopback IP address - 127.0.0.1 ; so everybody won’t have to worry about having to change their IP address inside their computers.
Requirements
You need to have an installed Apache 2.2 server inside your Windows computer. Make sure you can run it successfully and view the website content using a web browser. I already have an imaginary website called www.syahid.com running in a default install location inside the C:\Program Files\Apache Software Foundation\Apache2.2 folder so I am all set.
If you don’t fulfill the above requirement, please complete my tutorial on installing Apache 2.2 on Windows locally first.
How To Setup More Than One Website in a Single, Local Apache 2.2 Installation
In the tutorial below, I will setup another website inside my Apache web server. The first one is the already up and running website called www.syahid.com. The second one will be www.numbertwo.com. You can choose to use your own domain name but please tune the steps below to reflect your own chosen name.
Run Apache Web Server and Test First Website
1- Run Apache server. Open your browser window and open your first pre-configured website. In my case, I will open www.syahid.com. Make sure this one works first.
Setup Network
2- Open yours hosts file that is located inside C:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts (Windows XP) OR C:\winnt\system32\drivers\etc\hosts (Windows 2000). On the line that begins with the loopback address: 127.0.0.1 ; add the name of your second website at the end of the line. In my case, I add www.numbertwo.com at the end of the line.
3- Using the Windows command prompt, ping both domain names and make sure you get replies for each of them.
Setup Websites Directories
4- Open the root path of your Apache 2.2 installation - in my case: C:\Program Files\Apache Software Foundation\Apache2.2. Open the folder that contains the entire first website’s files e.g. htdocs. Create a new folder inside it and move all of them into the new folder.
5- Create a new folder on the same level of the first website folder. Now you will have two folders that represent the two websites that you are going to run simultaneously.
6- (optional ) If you try to open the first website again, you will notice that there are some minor glitches / errors. Don’t worry about this.
Add Contents For Second Website
7- For the sake of this tutorial, create a simple HTML file and save it as index.html inside the second website folder. You can create your own or use this sample HTML file.
Setup Virtual Hosts
8- Open the httpd-vhosts.conf file inside C:\Program Files\Apache Software Foundation\Apache2.2\conf\extra\ folder. Remove or comment all the default file contents.
9- Add these contents to the file and save it. Make sure you change the website names to reflect your own website name and folders. You can see that each website has its own VirtualHost section.
NameVirtualHost 127.0.0.1
<VirtualHost 127.0.0.1>
ServerName www.syahid.com
DocumentRoot “C:/Program Files/Apache Software Foundation/Apache2.2/htdocs/syahid”
ErrorLog “C:/Program Files/Apache Software Foundation/Apache2.2/htdocs/syahid/errorlog”
DirectoryIndex index.html index.php
</VirtualHost><VirtualHost 127.0.0.1>
ServerName www.numbertwo.com
DocumentRoot “C:/Program Files/Apache Software Foundation/Apache2.2/htdocs/numbertwo”
ErrorLog “C:/Program Files/Apache Software Foundation/Apache2.2/htdocs/numbertwo/errorlog”
DirectoryIndex index.html index.php
</VirtualHost>
10- Open your Apache configuration file; httpd.conf that is located inside C:\Program Files\Apache Software Foundation\Apache2.2\conf\ folder. Find and remove the # on the line that says Include /conf/extra/httpd-vhosts.conf . Save this file.
Test Both Websites
11- Restart your Apache web server.
12- Open your web browser. Try to open the first website e.g. www.syahid.com
13- Open the second website e.g. www.numbertwo.com
From now, you can setup and test as many websites as you want. You can add more websites to the above settings by repeating these steps:
- Create a new folder for the new website inside htdocs (DocumentRoot) folder.
- Create an index.html file inside the folder.
- Add the website name at the end of 127.0.0.1 line in hosts file.
- Make sure you can ping the website using its name.
- Copy and add a VirtualHost section inside httpd-vhosts.conf file. Tweak the new section to reflect the new website name and folder. Save this file again.
- Open the website with a browser.
You are done! Thank you for trying my (lengthy!) tutorial!
Tags: apache, web server, webserver, virtual host, virtual hosting
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12 Responses to “How to Setup More Than One Website in a Single, Local Apache 2.2 Installation (with screenshots!)”
if you get “Access forbidden!” for any one of the domain. just goto httpd.conf file and add this. e.g. you are getting this error for “www.numbertwo.com” and this website location on your HDD is “C:/Apache2.2/htdocs/numbertwo”
Options Indexes FollowSymLinks Includes ExecCGI
AllowOverride All
Order allow,deny
Allow from all
I hope this will help.
I am Using XAMPP and using the Apache which comes with XAMPP.
By Moiz Kiyai on Jun 10, 2008
Quite a interesting and in depth tutorial, will be useful to many people indeed.
By Keith Dsouza on Jun 10, 2008
is there any way to sepup wp envio locally on my computer
i am using windows xp
By Ajay on Jun 11, 2008
By Syahid A. on Jun 11, 2008
i am not able to get you?
By ajay on Jun 11, 2008
By Syahid A. on Jun 11, 2008
Why am i getting a dialog box to enter
in a username and password after installing Apache 2.2 to my local
desktop? I get this when i try to test it by http://localhost/ . I wanted to test my installation and getting this popup
dialog box instead. Also, i can’t seem to start the monitor service
either. It is still a red icon. I had downloaded the Win32 Binary
including OpenSSL 0.9.8h (MSI Installer) file earlier and installed it
afterwards. Thanks.
By Darren on Jun 22, 2008
By Syahid A. on Jun 22, 2008
Honestly, i didn’t know which one to download and decided on the 2nd one,but you’re saying to download the 1st one? here is what apache has on the site. i am new to all of this as of yesterday. i will eventually install and learn php and mysql. i discovered your site yesterday and love it. don’t know of any other site like this with screenshots.
# Win32 Binary without crypto (no mod_ssl) (MSI Installer): apache_2.2.9-win32-x86-no_ssl-r2.msi [PGP] [MD5]
# Win32 Binary including OpenSSL 0.9.8h (MSI Installer): apache_2.2.9-win32-x86-openssl-0.9.8h-r2.msi [PGP] [MD5]
By Darren on Jun 23, 2008
great stuff guys….being new to this, all the tutorials I ran into so far is duplication of the same old stuff but you guy have stuff that I never new about ..thank you guy I have already bookmark the site.
By Lionn on Jul 20, 2008
The two site configuration in windows is excellent. How about one step futher, two sites with two services running so you can stop and start one without affecting the other. Like a dev on port 8080 and user on port 80.
-Jake
By Jake on Aug 26, 2008
By Syahid A. on Aug 26, 2008