How to Set Up Virtual Hosts in Apache

What Are Virtual Hosts?

Virtual hosts allow a single Apache server to serve multiple websites, each with its own domain name, document root, and configuration.

Create a Virtual Host

Create /etc/apache2/sites-available/example.com.conf:

<VirtualHost *:80>
    ServerName example.com
    ServerAlias www.example.com
    DocumentRoot /var/www/example.com/public

    <Directory /var/www/example.com/public>
        AllowOverride All
        Require all granted
    </Directory>

    ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/example.com-error.log
    CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/example.com-access.log combined
</VirtualHost>

Enable the Site

# Create document root
sudo mkdir -p /var/www/example.com/public
echo "<h1>Welcome to Example.com</h1>" > /var/www/example.com/public/index.html
sudo chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/example.com

# Enable the site
sudo a2ensite example.com.conf

# Disable default site (optional)
sudo a2dissite 000-default.conf

# Test and reload
sudo apache2ctl configtest
sudo systemctl reload apache2

PHP-FPM Integration

<VirtualHost *:80>
    ServerName example.com
    DocumentRoot /var/www/example.com/public

    <FilesMatch \.php$>
        SetHandler "proxy:unix:/run/php/php8.2-fpm.sock|fcgi://localhost"
    </FilesMatch>
</VirtualHost>

Enable SSL

sudo a2enmod ssl rewrite
sudo certbot --apache -d example.com -d www.example.com

Useful Modules

sudo a2enmod rewrite   # URL rewriting (.htaccess)
sudo a2enmod headers   # Custom HTTP headers
sudo a2enmod ssl       # HTTPS support
sudo a2enmod proxy_fcgi # PHP-FPM support