How to Configure Apache Web Server on Linux

I've shown previously how to install a LAMP server in Ubuntu. If the purpose of your LAMP installation was to set up your own web development environment, then you may want to do some further configuration to your system. This Apache howto is not intended to cover Apache configuration in depth. This is just some basic configuration to help you set up a web development environment in Linux. For more information, see the official Apache documentation.

Why Change the Apache Configuration?

By default, Apache is set up for your web site's files to be in the /var/www directory. This is fine if you only want to work on one website and access it through http://localhost/. But what if you want to work on several websites at the same time? Well, one solution is to create different directories under /var/www like /var/www/site1 and then access it through http://localhost/site1/. I prefer a more elegant solution.

I prefer to build websites in a directory under my own ID. I can then configure the Apache http server to point to the site directories with URLs like http://site1/, http://site2/, etc.

Creating a Web Development Directory

Lets start off by creating a folder structure for the development environment. You can do this from your file manager. I prefer the terminal.

We now have a directory called webdev under our home directory. Within the webdev directory are two directories called site1 and site2.

Create Some Test Files

Now we're going to create some basic test files so that we know our Apache configuration worked. Again, I'm going to use the terminal to create these files, but feel free to use your favorite text editor.

Enable the Sites in Apache

OK, we're now ready to do the actual Apache configuration. Go to /etc/apache2/sites-available.

As root, copy the default file as site1.

Repeat the process to create a site2 file.

As root, edit the site1 configuration file.

Edit the file to look like this (the changes are in bold).

<VirtualHost *:80>
	ServerAdmin webmaster@localhost
        ServerName site1

	DocumentRoot /home/yourID/webdev/site1/
	<Directory />
		Options FollowSymLinks
		AllowOverride None
	</Directory>
	<Directory /home/yourID/webdev/site1/>
		Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews
		AllowOverride All
		Order allow,deny
		allow from all
	</Directory>

	ScriptAlias /cgi-bin/ /usr/lib/cgi-bin/
	<Directory "/usr/lib/cgi-bin">
		AllowOverride None
		Options +ExecCGI -MultiViews +SymLinksIfOwnerMatch
		Order allow,deny
		Allow from all
	</Directory>

	ErrorLog /var/log/apache2/error.log

	# Possible values include: debug, info, notice, warn, error, crit,
	# alert, emerg.
	LogLevel warn

	CustomLog /var/log/apache2/access.log combined

    Alias /doc/ "/usr/share/doc/"
    <Directory "/usr/share/doc/">
        Options Indexes MultiViews FollowSymLinks
        AllowOverride None
        Order deny,allow
        Deny from all
        Allow from 127.0.0.0/255.0.0.0 ::1/128
    </Directory>

</VirtualHost>

Note: The line that changes AllowOverride None to AllowOverride All is required if you want to enable URL re-writes through a .htaccess file. You need this if you want to utilize pretty permalinks in WordPress.

You now need to enable your new site.

You should get a message telling you that you need to reload Apache to activate the new configuration. But first you need to edit your /etc/hosts file.

Edit the first line adding site1 to the end of the line so it looks something like this and save the file.

127.0.0.1 localhost site1

You can now reload Apache.

Site1 is now enabled. Check it by browsing to http://site1/. If everything worked right, you should see a web page that says "Site1 works!"

Repeat the procedure to enable site2, etc.

Edit 12-Dec-09
If you get an error like “apache2: Could not determine the server’s fully qualified domain name, using 127.0.0.1 for localhost,” you can fix it with this command.

Then, reload Apache to eliminate the error.

Comments

190 Responses to “How to Configure Apache Web Server on Linux”

1. lenny b says:

   January 28, 2013 at 3:36 PM

   I'm not working locally, I have a server at an ip address and the partition for the site and files is on a separate disk than where the var/www directory is. Both virtual on the same server, but following the steps above, I get the "Index of/" page.

   I'm using Drupal and put 1.1.1.1/drupal but to no avail. (that's not the real IP of course, but the example)

   Is there anything else to reload/restart when doing this?

   Reply
   • lenny b says:

     January 28, 2013 at 3:55 PM

     nevermind. I just copied and changed the default file so that the ip goes straight to the folder. Thanks.

     Reply
2. Apache2 Tutorial For Debian Linux | Linux Tutorials says:

   March 27, 2013 at 11:04 PM

   [...] this to enabling sites in apache2. If you want you can also change port number for security [...]

   Reply