Apache is a popular open source web server that is widely used to host web pages.
In this tutorial, you’ll be creating a virtual host environment to run multiple websites with Apache on your Ubuntu 22.04.4 LTS server allowing you to add several domains hosted on just 1 IP address.
Installing Apache
We’ll begin by updating the local repository with the following command
sudo apt update
Next, install the Apache server
sudo apt install apache2
Run this command to start the Apache server
systemctl start apache2.service
Run this command to verify that Apache is running
systemctl status apache2.service
You can test if your Apache server is live by typing your public IP address in your web server, you should get the following result
Configuring Your Own Website
Apache by default is setup to serve documents from **/var/www. **So you will need to create store your webpage directory in this folder. We will be using demo.com here as follows:
sudo mkdir -p /var/www/demo.com
You will need to modify the ownership of this directory so as to be accessible and executable by your user account. This is done by executing the following:
sudo chown -R $USER:$USER /var/www/demo.com
Next you will change the permission settings of the directory to allow everyone to have read and execute permissions while the $USER has read, write and execute permissions
sudo chmod -R 755 /var/www/demo.com
Next create an index.html file that will be used to host your site’s html code
sudo vim /var/www/demo.com/index.html
Insert the following code in the index.html **file by pressing **i **to write the file. And to save it press **ESQ **to exit insert mode, *and *:wq **after to save and quit the the file editor
<html>
<head>
<title>Welcome to Your_domain!</title>
</head>
<body>
<h1>Success! The your_domain virtual host is working!</h1>
</body>
</html>
Setting up the VirtualHost Configuration File
The next step is to setup the configuration file for the webserver in the /etc/apache2 folder — which is where the Apache configuration file is located. The file also uses the **.conf **extension. Create the configuration file using the following command
sudo vim /etc/apache2/sites-available/demo.com.conf
Insert this code into the file
<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerAdmin webmaster@localhost
ServerName demo.com
ServerAlias www.demo.com
DocumentRoot /var/www/demo.com
ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/error.log
CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/access.log combined
</VirtualHost>
Save and close the file
Activating VirtualHost file
After setting up the website, the next step is to activate the virtual host file. Do that by running the following commands
First enable the file with the **a2ensite **command
sudo a2ensite demo.com.conf
Then disable the default configuration file
sudo a2dissite 000-default.conf
Check for configuration errors using the following command:
sudo apache2ctl configtest
The output of that command should be “ Syntax OK” to indicate that it is properly configured
Restart the Apache server to implement the changes
sudo systemctl restart apache2
Congrats! Your website is now hosted on your machine. To view the website navigate to http://demo.com
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