How to configure two or more sites using Apache Web server

How to host two or more sites on the popular and powerful Apache web server.

In my last article, I explained how to configure the Apache web server for a single site, which turns out to be quite easy. In this article, I will show you how to use a single Apache instance to serve multiple sites.

Note: I wrote this article on a Fedora 27 virtual machine with Apache 2.4.29. If you use another distribution or a different version of Fedora, the commands you use and the location and contents of the configuration files may be different.

As I mentioned in my previous article, all Apache configuration files are located in /etc/httpd/conf and /etc/httpd/conf.d. By default, the site's data is located in /var/www. For multiple sites, you will need to provide multiple locations, one for each hosted site.

Name-based virtual hosts

Using name-based virtual hosting, you can use a single IP address for multiple sites. Modern Web servers, including Apache, use the hostname portion of a given URL to determine which virtual Web host responds to a request for a page. This just requires more configuration than a single site.

Even if you’re only starting with a single site, I recommend setting it up as a virtual host so that it’s easier to add more sites later. In this article, I will start from where we left off in the previous article, so you need to set up the original site, which is the name-based virtual site.

Prepare the original site

Before you can set up your second site, you'll need name-based virtual hosting for your existing website. If you don't have a site now, go back and create one now.

Once you have the site up, add the following to the bottom of your /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf configuration file (adding this is the only change you need to make to your httpd.conf file):

<VirtualHost 127.0.0.1:80>
 DocumentRoot /var/www/html
 ServerName www.site1.org
</VirtualHost>

This will be the first virtual host configuration section and it should remain first to make it the default definition. This means that HTTP access to the server through the IP address or other names that resolve to this IP address but do not have a specific named host configuration section will be directed to this virtual host. All other virtual host configuration sections should follow this one.

You will also need to set up your website using entries in /etc/hosts to provide name resolution. Last time, we just used the IP address of localhost. Typically this can be done using whatever name service you use, such as Google or Godaddy. For your test site, do this by adding a new name to the localhost line in /etc/hosts. Add entries for both sites so you don't have to edit this file again later. The results are as follows:

127.0.0.1 localhost localhost.localdomain localhost4 localhost4.localdomain4 www.site1.org www.site2.org

Let's change the /var/www/html/index.html file to be a little more obvious. It should look something like this (with some extra text to identify that this is site 1):

<h1>Hello World</h1>

Website 1.

Restart the HTTPD server to enable the changes to the httpd configuration. You can then use Lynx text mode to view the site from the command line.

[root@testvm1 ~]# systemctl restart httpd
[root@testvm1 ~]# lynx www.site1.org

      Hello World 
 Website 1.
<snip>
Commands: Use arrow keys to move, '?' for help, 'q' to quit, '<-' to go back.
Arrow keys: Up and Down to move. Right to follow a link; Left to go back.
H)elp O)ptions P)rint G)o M)ain screen Q)uit /=search [delete]=history list

You can see the modifications to the original website with no obvious errors. Press Q and then Y to exit the Lynx Web browser.

Configuring the Second Site

Now you are ready to build your second website. Use the following command to create a new website directory structure:

[root@testvm1 html]# mkdir -p /var/www/html2

Note that the second site is just a second html directory located in the same /var/www directory as the first site.

Now create a new index file /var/www/html2/index.html with the following content (this index file is slightly different to distinguish it from the original website):

<h1>Hello World -- Again</h1>

Web site 2.

Create a new configuration section in httpd.conf for the second site and place it below the previous virtual host configuration section (the two should look very similar). This section tells the Web server where to find the HTML files for the second site.

<VirtualHost 127.0.0.1:80>
 DocumentRoot /var/www/html2
 ServerName www.site2.org
</VirtualHost>

Restart HTTPD and use Lynx to view the results.

[root@testvm1 httpd]# systemctl restart httpd
[root@testvm1 httpd]# lynx www.site2.org
     Hello World -- Again
 Web site 2.
<snip>
Commands: Use arrow keys to move, '?' for help, 'q' to quit, '<-' to go back.
Arrow keys: Up and Down to move. Right to follow a link; Left to go back.
H)elp O)ptions P)rint G)o M)ain screen Q)uit /=search [delete]=history list

Here I have compressed the output to fit this space. The difference in the pages indicates that this is the second site. To display two sites simultaneously, open another terminal session and use the Lynx Web browser to view the other site.

Other considerations

This simple example shows how to use a single instance of the Apache HTTPD server to serve two sites. Configuring virtual hosts can become a bit more complicated when other factors are taken into account.

For example, you might want to use some CGI scripts for one or all of these sites. To do this, you might create some directories for CGI programs under the /var/www directory: /var/www/cgi-bin 和/var/www/cgi-bin2 , named consistent with the HTML directories. You then need to add configuration directives to the virtual host stanza to specify the directory location of the CGI scripts. Each site can have a directory for downloaded files. This also requires an entry in the corresponding virtual host stanza.

The Apache website describes other methods for managing multiple sites, as well as configuration options ranging from performance tuning to security.

Apache is a powerful web server that can be used to host simple to highly complex websites. Although its overall market share is shrinking, it is still the most commonly used HTTPD server on the Internet.