Host Multiple Websites On One Apache Server On Ubuntu
In this post, I will guide you on Host Multiple Websites On One Apache Server On Ubuntu. Use Apache Virtual Host to configure different domains on your Apache Server.
If you have a server with large hardware resources, then you can host multiple websites using virtual hosting to make full use of it. Apache Virtual Host is one of the useful functions for you to host multiple websites on a single server.
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Steps To Configure Multiple Websites On A Single Apache Server
1. Install Apache Web Server
If you don’t have an Apache server installed refer to post: How To Install Apache On Ubuntu 20.04.
2. Create the Directory Structure
First, create a document root directory for both websites by commands:
sudo mkdir /var/www/html/example.com
sudo mkdir /var/www/html/example1.com
Next, create an index.html page to be track the results.
Create an index.html page for site example.com.
sudo nano /var/www/html/example.com/index.html
Copy and paste below content to file.
<html>
<head>
<title>example.com</title>
</head>
<body>
<h1>Welcome to example.com website</h1>
</body>
</html>
Next, create an index.html page for site example1.com.
sudo nano /var/www/html/example1.com/index.html
Copy and paste below content to file.
<html>
<head>
<title>example1.com</title>
</head>
<body>
<h1>Welcome to example1.com website</h1>
</body>
</html>
3. Grant Permissions
Grant permissions of example.com and example1.com directory by commands:
chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/html/example.com
chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/html/example1.com
4. Create a Virtual Host Configuration File
Create an Apache virtual host configuration file for example.com:
sudo nano /etc/apache2/sites-available/example.com.conf
Add the following lines:
<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerAdmin webmaster@localhost
ServerName example.com
ServerAlias www.example.com
DocumentRoot /var/www/html/example.com
ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/error.log
CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/access.log combined
</VirtualHost>
Create an Apache virtual host configuration file for example1.com:
sudo nano /etc/apache2/sites-available/example1.com.conf
And add the following lines:
<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerAdmin webmaster@localhost
ServerName example1.com
ServerAlias www.example1.com
DocumentRoot /var/www/html/example1.com
ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/error.log
CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/access.log combined
</VirtualHost>
Then, enable the virtual host configuration file with the following commands:
sudo a2ensite example.com.conf
sudo a2ensite example1.com.conf
Restart Apache for the changes to take effect.
sudo systemctl restart apache2
5. Test your Results
Visit the website with the path http://example.com you will see results like this:
And visit the website with the path http://example1.com you will see results like this:
This is the end of the post.
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Didn’t work.
This only works for http domain requests. It won’t work for https requests for the same domain until you configure for https.
I think this is what the other commenter (Tester) has experienced.