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So, you want to set up a Apache server using more than one domain name and only one IP address. No problem!! Well, I say no problem, but it took me a while to figure it out and I'm here to tell you what I learned to save you some time and trouble. I am using Apache2 on a Red Hat 8.0 system, however I will keep this as generic as possible without leaving out any of the details. First, we will edit the Apache httpd.conf by hand using your favorite text editor, then I will show you how to do it with a GUI called apacheconf. To go straight to the apacheconf instructions, click here. Depending on your Linux distribution, you should find the httpd.conf file in /etc/httpd/conf or /etc/apache/conf.

First things first. Be sure to copy your clean or working httpd.conf file to a safe place on your server. This provides you with a back-up if you mangle the copy of your httpd.conf file that you are working on. Just move the clean or working copy of your httpd.conf file back into your configuration directory and you're back in business. Take it from me, that little tip has pulled me out of more jams than I can count!

Now, lets get to work. As root, open your httpd.conf file in your favorite text editor. There's all kinds of good stuff in this file, but don't worry about that. We will only be making changes to a small portion of the code. From the top of the httpd.conf file, scroll down a little way till you see a line that will say "Listen". This is where you are telling the server what IP address and port number to use. There are two acceptable formats to use here. The first acceptable way is to list your IP address followed by a colon and the port number. Apache's default port number is 80. So if your IP address is 12.34.56.78 and Apache is running on port 80, then the line should look like this;

Listen 12.34.56.78:80

If you have more than one IP address, you can just add an asterisk then the hyphen and then the port number. The asterisk is what is known as a wildcard in many operating systems. This would mean that it will listen to all IP's connected to that server. Once again, using port 80 it should look like this:

Listen *:80

Scrolling down a little further, you should find a directive that looks something like this:

DirectoryIndex index.html index.htm index.shtml

This directive determines what files Apache will look for when a request is made to a directory. This is the "index" or "home" page automatically served if found in a directory without having to name the file specifically. This will make sense later, for now, just make sure it is not commented.

Continue scrolling down the file till you see a section called Name Virtual Host. By defaultm this entry will have a # symbol in front of it, which comments the line out. Remove the # symbol to activate this directive. This directive enables virtual hosting by associating an IP address with domain names you intend to host on your Apache webserver. Using our previous examples, if your IP address is 12.34.56.78, the directive should look like this:

NameVirtualHost 12.34.56.78

Now comes the fun part. Scroll down till you see a section that says Virtual host. This is where you define each virtual host for each domain name that you will be serving. There are many options you can use in a Virtual host directive. It can require as few as three options to just make it work or many more options depending on what you want to do. In the first section you need to enter a virtual host directive. If you've ever coded HTML, it looks like an HTML tag with your server's IP address entered into it. It should look like this;

Below that you need to define the web-root directory for the domain you intend to host. This is where you will be keeping the all of this web site's html files and images and it is also where the server will be looking for the requested pages to serve to your site's many adoring fans. Apache keeps its files in the /var/www/html or on some systems just /var/www directory so that's where we start. Make a directory inside the /var/www/html (or /var/www) directory for each of your domain names and I would suggest naming them something dealing with the site for easy reference. For example, if your domain is www.BigFeet.org, then name the directory "bigfeet". To create that directory, use the command

mkdir /var/www/html/bigfeet

For simplicity, make sure that this directory is "world read/write-able" by setting the permissions with chmod to 666. This is not the most secure configuration for the directory, but you can set permissions after you get Apache running properly.

Now you have to tell Apache that when someone goes to www.BigFeet.org that it is to go to /var/www/html/bigfeet and serve the requested page from there. So under your

tag, add this:

DocumentRoot /var/www/html/bigfeet

Under that you need to add a section called ServerAdmin. This is an Apache setting that gives an administrator email address particular domain. This address appears on some server-generated pages, such as error documents. The entry for this setting should look like this:

ServerAdmin You@Youremail.com

Next, we'll tell Apache what your domain name is. So below the ServerAdmin line add this:

ServerName bigfeet.org

Now there are many other options that you can add to new lines in this section like a custom 404 Page Not Found screen (ErrorDocument 404 "http://www.BigFeet.org/missing.html"), but we wont get into too much of that here.

Just like in html coding, you have to close your tags. As it stands, we still have an open <VirtualHost> tag dangling around up there, and we cant have that can we? Nope, we sure cant, so lets close it. You do that just like you would in an html document. On a new line add:

</VirtualHost>

That's it!! One domain name down. Each domain has to have its own virtual host section. So for each new domain name you have to add all the info from <VirtualHost 12.34.56.78> to </VirtualHost>. Below is a quick sample of a server running 2 domains. One called www.BigFeet.org and one called www.SmellyCarpet.com (Don' ask!). They should look like this:

# Virtual host Virtual Host 1

DocumentRoot /var/www/html/bigfeet

ServerAdmin webmaster@bigfeet.org

ServerName bigfeet.org

DirectoryIndex index.html index.html index.htm index.shtml

ErrorDocument 404 "http://bigfeet.org/missing.html"

</VirtualHost>

# Virtual host Virtual Host 2

DocumentRoot /var/www/html/smellycarpet

ServerAdmin webmaster@smellycarpet.com

ServerName smellycarpet.com

DirectoryIndex index.html index.html index.htm index.shtml

ErrorDocument 404 "http://smellycarpet.com/missing.html"

</VirtualHost>