Configuring Apache2 server on Ubuntu
The configuration of a virtual host described here should follow installation of Apache2 server, as described on page: Installing Apache2 and PHP.
The instructions described here should be executed in a terminal window by a user that has sudo authorization. The text editor used here is nano within a terminal window.
First update and upgrade your repositories by running the following commands in a terminal window:
sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade
1. Setting up a virtual host file
The term Virtual Host refers to the practice of running more than one website on a single machine. Virtual hosts can be "IP-based", meaning that every web site has a specific IP address, or "name-based", meaning that you have multiple names running on each IP address.
In Linux, Apache2 server is located in: /etc/apache2/
The default virtual host configuration file is:
/etc/apache2/sites-available/000-default.conf
Open this file by typing:
sudo nano /etc/apache2/sites-available/000-default.conf
Initially, this file includes the following lines, excluding comment lines that start with #.
<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerAdmin webmaster@localhost
DocumentRoot /var/www/html
ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/error.log
CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/access.log combined
</VirtualHost>
Edit this file to generate the following:
<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerAdmin webmaster@localhost
ServerName example.com #Change to your domain
ServerAlias www.example.com #Change to your domain
DocumentRoot /var/www/html
ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/error.log
CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/access.log combined
</VirtualHost>
Then press ^O, to save the file, naming it as:
/etc/apache2/sites-available/example.com.conf
Don't forget to change the name example.com to your domain name.
After this step, check the content of the directory by typing
ls /etc/apache2/sites-available
The result should be:
000-default.conf example.com.conf
2. Enabling the configuration file
Enable the new site by typing the command:
sudo a2ensite example.com.conf
This command will add a new file to the directory /etc/apache2/sites-enabled.
To see the content of the directory type:
ls /etc/apache2/sites-enabled
The result should be:
000-default.conf example.com.conf
Next, disable the default file by typing the command:
sudo a2dissite 000-default.conf
After these operations check the configuration by typing:
sudo apache2ctl configtest
If the configuration is OK, then the Output should be:
Syntax OK
Then restart Apache2 server by typing
sudo systemctl restart apache2
First view of the website
After the completion of the definition of a virtual host, entering the domain name (http://www.example.com) or the domain IP should show the default page for the DocumentRoot /etc/apache2/html. The default page for Apache2 is index.html. Click the image to see the page.
