VirtualHost Examples1: Running several name-based web sites on a single IP address

This document attempts to answer the commonly-asked questions about setting up virtual hosts.

These scenarios are those involving multiple web sites running on a single server, via name-based or IP-based virtual hosts.

Your server has a single IP address, and multiple aliases (CNAMES) point to this machine in DNS. You want to run a web server for http://www.example1.com/ and http://www.example2.org/ on this machine.

#########################################################
Server configuration
# Ensure that Apache listens on port 80
Listen 80
# Listen for virtual host requests on all IP addresses
NameVirtualHost *:80
<VirtualHost *:80>
DocumentRoot /www/example1
ServerName http://www.example1.com/
# Other directives here
</VirtualHost>
<VirtualHost *:80>
DocumentRoot /www/example2
ServerName http://www.example2.org/
# Other directives here
</VirtualHost>
##########################################################
The asterisks match all addresses, so the main server serves no requests. Due to the fact that http://www.example1.com/ is first in the configuration file, it has the highest priority and can be seen as the default or primary server. That means that if a request is received that does not match one of the specified ServerName directives, it will be served by this first VirtualHost.

Note: You can, if you wish, replace * with the actual IP address of the system. In that case, the argument to VirtualHost must match the argument to NameVirtualHost:
###############################
NameVirtualHost 172.20.30.40
<VirtualHost 172.20.30.40>
# etc ...
###############################
However, it is additionally useful to use * on systems where the IP address is not predictable - for example if you have a dynamic IP address with your ISP, and you are using some variety of dynamic DNS solution. Since * matches any IP address, this configuration would work without changes whenever your IP address changes.

The above configuration is what you will want to use in almost all name-based virtual hosting situations. The only thing that this configuration will not work for, in fact, is when you are serving different content based on differing IP addresses or ports