How To Set Up Apache Virtual Hosts 
on Ubuntu 20.04

Published on April 18, 2022 · Updated on April 18, 2022
By Kong Yang and Lisa Tagliaferri


Introduction


The Apache HTTP server is a popular open-source web server that offers
flexibility, power, and widespread support for developers. Apache server
configuration does not take place in a single monolithic file, but instead
happens through a modular design where new files can be added and modified
as needed. Within this modular design, you can create an individual site or
domain called a virtual host.

Using virtual hosts, one Apache instance can serve multiple websites. Each
domain or individual site that is configured using Apache will direct the
visitor to a specific directory holding that site’s information. This is
done without indicating to the visitor that the same server is also
responsible for other sites. This scheme is expandable without any software
limit as long as your server can handle the load.

In this guide, you will set up Apache virtual hosts on an Ubuntu 20.04
server. During this process, you’ll learn how to serve different content
to different visitors depending on which domains they are requesting by
creating two virtual host sites.


Prerequisites


Before you begin this tutorial, you will need:

An Ubuntu 20.04 server with a non-root user with sudo privileges. You can
use our Initial Server Setup with Ubuntu 20.04 guide to set this up.
Apache installed on the server. You can learn how by completing steps 1-3
on our How To Install the Apache Web Server on Ubuntu 20.04 tutorial.  

If you are using DigitalOcean, you can learn how to set up domains by 
following our product documentation, How to Add Domains.  In order to 
successfully complete this tutorial, you will need two domains with:

An A record with your_domain pointing to your server’s public IP address.
An A record with www.your_domain pointing to your server’s public IP address.

For other providers, please refer to their relevant product documentation.

Note: 
If you do not have domains available at this time, you can use test values
locally on your computer. Step 6 of this tutorial will show you how to test
and configure your test values. This will allow you to validate your
configuration even though your content won’t be available to other
visitors through the domain name.


Step 1 — Creating the Directory Structure


The first step is to create a directory structure that will hold the site
data that you will be serving to visitors.

Your document root, the top-level directory that Apache looks at to find
content to serve, will be set to individual directories under the /var/www
directory. You will create a directory here for each of the virtual hosts.

Within each of these directories, you will create a public_html directory.
The public_html directory contains the content that will be served to your
visitors. The parent directories, named here as your_domain_1 and your_domain_2,
will hold the scripts and application code to support the web content.

Use these commands, with your own domain names, to create your directories:

sudo mkdir -p /var/www/your_domain_1/public_html
sudo mkdir -p /var/www/your_domain_2/public_html

Be sure to replace your_domain_1 and your_domain_2 with your own respective
domains. For example, if one of your domains was example.com you would
create this directory structure: /var/www/example.com/public_html.


Step 2 — Granting Permissions


You’ve created the directory structure for your files, but they are owned
by the root user. If you want your regular user to be able to modify files
in these web directories, you can change the ownership with these commands:

sudo chown -R $USER:$USER /var/www/your_domain_1/public_html
sudo chown -R $USER:$USER /var/www/your_domain_2/public_html

The $USER variable will take the value of the user you are currently logged
in as when you press ENTER. By doing this, the regular user now owns the
public_html subdirectories where you will be storing your content.

You should also modify your permissions to ensure that read access is
permitted to the general web directory and all of the files and folders it
contains so that the pages can be served correctly:

sudo chmod -R 755 /var/www

Your web server now has the permissions it needs to serve content, and your user
should be able to create content within the necessary folders. The next step is
to create content for your virtual host sites.


Step 3 — Creating Default Pages for Each Virtual Host


With your directory structure in place, you can start focusing on each
individual virtual host site and the content within that site. Start by
creating an index.html page for your first site your_domain_1.

Open and create the index.html file with your preferred text editor. This
example uses nano:

nano /var/www/your_domain_1/public_html/index.html

Within this file, create an HTML file that indicates to visitors which site
they are connected to:

/var/www/your_domain_1/public_html/index.html
<html>
  <head>
    <title>Welcome to your_domain_1!</title>
  </head>
  <body>
    <h1>Success! The your_domain_1 virtual host is working!</h1>
  </body>
</html>

To save and close the file in nano, start by pressing CTRL+X. Press Y when
prompted to save the file, then press ENTER when you are finished to exit.

Next, copy this file to use as the base for your second site by typing:

cp /var/www/your_domain_1/public_html/index.html /v
ar/www/your_domain_2/public_html/index.html

Then open this new file and modify the relevant pieces of information using
your text editor like before:

nano /var/www/your_domain_2/public_html/index.html

/var/www/your_domain_2/public_html/index.html
<html>
  <head>
    <title>Welcome to your_domain_2!</title>
  </head>
  <body> <h1>Success! The your_domain_2 virtual host is working!</h1>
  </body>
</html>

Save and close this file. You now have one page for each site that you can
use to test the virtual host configuration.


Step 4 — Creating New Virtual Host Files


Virtual host files are the files that specify the actual configuration of
your virtual hosts and dictates how the Apache web server will respond to
various domain requests.

Apache comes with a default virtual host file called 000-default.conf. You
can copy this file to create virtual host files for each of your domains.

Copy the default configuration file over to the first domain:

sudo cp /etc/apache2/sites-available/000-default.conf 
	/etc/apache2/sites-available/your_domain_1.conf

Be aware that the default Ubuntu configuration requires that each virtual
host file end in .conf.

Open the new file in your preferred text editor with root privileges:

sudo nano /etc/apache2/sites-available/your_domain_1.conf

With comments removed, the file will be similar to this:

/etc/apache2/sites-available/your_domain_1.conf
<VirtualHost *:80>
  ...
    ServerAdmin webmaster@localhost
    DocumentRoot /var/www/html
   ...
    ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/error.log
    CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/access.log combined
</VirtualHost>

Within this file, customize the items for your first domain and add some
additional directives. This virtual host section matches any requests that
are made on port 80, the default HTTP port.

First, change the ServerAdmin directive to an email that the site
administrator can receive emails through:

/etc/apache2/sites-available/your_domain_1.conf
ServerAdmin admin@your_domain_1

After this, add two additional directives. The first, called ServerName,
establishes the base domain for the virtual host definition. The second,
called ServerAlias, defines further names that should match as if they were
the base name. This is useful for matching additional hosts you defined. For
instance, if you set the ServerName directive to example.com you could
define a ServerAlias to www.example.com, and both will point to this
server’s IP address.

Add these two directives to your configuration file after the ServerAdmin
line:

/etc/apache2/sites-available/your_domain_1.conf
<gVirtualHost *:80>
  ...
    ServerAdmin admin@your_domain_1
    ServerName your_domain_1
    ServerAlias www.your_domain_1
    DocumentRoot /var/www/html
    ...
<g/VirtualHost>

Next, change your virtual host file location for the document root for this
domain. Edit the DocumentRoot directive to point to the directory you
created for this host:

/etc/apache2/sites-available/your_domain_1.conf
DocumentRoot /var/www/your_domain_1/public_html

Here is an example of the virtual host file with all of the adjustments made
above:

/etc/apache2/sites-available/your_domain_1.conf
lt;gVirtualHost *:80>
  ...
    ServerAdmin admin@your_domain_1
    ServerName your_domain_1
    ServerAlias www.your_domain_1
    DocumentRoot /var/www/your_domain_1/public_html
    ...
    ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/error.log
    CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/access.log combined
    ...
lt;g/VirtualHost>

Save and close the file.

Create your second configuration file by copying over the file from your
first virtual host site:

sudo cp /etc/apache2/sites-available/your_domain_1.conf /etc/apache2/sites
-available/your_domain_2.conf

Open the new file in your preferred editor:

sudo nano /etc/apache2/sites-available/your_domain_2.conf

You now need to modify all of the pieces of information to reference your
second domain. When you are finished, it should look like this:

/etc/apache2/sites-available/your_domain_2.conf
<VirtualHost *:80>
  ...
    ServerAdmin admin@your_domain_2
    ServerName your_domain_2
    ServerAlias www.your_domain_2
    DocumentRoot /var/www/your_domain_2/public_html
    ...
    ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/error.log
    CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/access.log combined
    ...
</virtualhost>

Save and close the file when you are finished.


Step 5 — Enabling the New Virtual Host Files


Now that you have created your virtual host files, you must enable them.
Apache includes some tools that allow you to do this.

You’ll be using the a2ensite tool to enable each of your sites. If you
would like to read more about this script, you can refer to the a2ensite
documentation.

Use the following commands to enable your virtual host sites:

sudo a2ensite your_domain_1.conf
sudo a2ensite your_domain_2.conf

There will be output for both sites, similar to the example below,
reminding you to reload your Apache server:

Output
Enabling site example.com.
To activate the new configuration, you need to run:
  systemctl reload apache2

Before reloading your server, disable the default site defined in 
000-default.conf by using the a2dissite command:

sudo a2dissite 000-default.conf

Output
Site 000-default disabled.
To activate the new configuration, you need to run:
  systemctl reload apache2

Next, test for configuration errors:

sudo apache2ctl configtest

The should receive the following output:

Output
. . .
Syntax OK

When you are finished, restart Apache to make these changes take effect.

sudo systemctl restart apache2

Optionally, you can check the status of the server after all these changes
with this command:

sudo systemctl status apache2

Your server should now be set up to serve two websites. If you’re using
real domain names, you can skip Step 6 and move on to Step 7. If you’re
testing your configuration locally, follow Step 6 to learn how to test your
setup using your local computer.


Step 6 — (Optional) Setting Up Local Hosts File


If you haven’t been using actual domain names that you own to test this
procedure, and have been using example domains instead, you can still test
the functionality of your virtual host sites by temporarily modifying the
hosts file on your local computer. This will intercept any requests for the
domains that you configured and point them to your Virtual Private Server
(VPS), just as the DNS system would do if you were using registered domains.
This will only work from your local computer and is only for testing purposes.

Make sure you are operating on your local computer for these steps and not
your VPS server. You will need to know the computer’s administrative
password or otherwise be a member of the administrative group.

If you are on a Mac or Linux computer, edit your local file with
administrative privileges by typing:

sudo nano /etc/hosts

If you are on a Windows machine, open the Command Prompt and type:

notepad %windir%\system32\drivers\etc\hosts

The details that you need to add are the public IP address of your server,
followed by the domain you want to use to reach that server. Using the
domains used in this guide, and replacing your server IP for the
your_server_IP text, your file should look like this:

/etc/hosts
127.0.0.1   localhost
127.0.1.1   guest-desktop
your_server_IP your_domain_1
your_server_IP your_domain_2

This will direct any requests for your two domains on your computer and send
them to your server at the designated IP address.

Save and close the file.


Step 7 — Testing Your Results


Now that you have your virtual hosts configured, you can test your setup by
going to the domains that you configured in your web browser:

http://your_domain_1


An example of the virtual host web page with edited content

You can also visit your second host page and view the file you created for
your second site:

http://your_domain_2


An example of a different virtual host web page with edited content

If both of these sites work as expected, you’ve successfully configured
two virtual hosts on the same server.

Note: 
If you adjusted your local computer’s hosts file, like in Step 6 of this
tutorial, you may want to delete the lines you added now that you verified
that your configuration works. This will prevent your hosts file from being
filled with entries that are no longer necessary.



Conclusion


You now have a single server handling two separate domain names. You can
expand this process by following the steps we outlined above to add
additional virtual hosts. There is no software limit on the number of domain
names Apache can handle, so feel free to make as many virtual hosts as your
server is capable of handling.