How To Set Up Apache Virtual Hosts on Ubuntu Server

Introduction

The Apache HTTP server is a popular open-source web server that offers flexibility, power, and widespread support for developers. Apache server configuration does not take place in a single monolithic file, but instead happens through a modular design where new files can be added and modified as needed. Within this modular design, you can create an individual site or domain called a virtual host.

Introduction

Using virtual hosts, one Apache instance can serve multiple websites. Each domain or individual site that is configured using Apache will direct the visitor to a specific directory holding that site’s information. This is done without indicating to the visitor that the same server is also responsible for other sites. This scheme is expandable without any software limit as long as your server can handle the load.

In this guide, you will set up Apache virtual hosts on an Ubuntu server. During this process, you’ll learn how to serve different content to different visitors depending on which domains they are requesting by creating two virtual host sites.

Validated on recent Ubuntu releases: The steps and commands in this tutorial have been verified on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS, 22.04 LTS, and 24.04 LTS. Apache’s configuration layout (sites-available, sites-enabled, a2ensite, a2dissite) and the directory structure used here are the same across these versions.

Key takeaways

Virtual hosts let one Apache instance serve multiple sites; each domain points to its own document root.
You create a directory under /var/www per site (for example, /var/www/your_domain/public_html) and set ownership and permissions so the web server can read files and your user can edit them.
Each site gets its own config file in /etc/apache2/sites-available/ with ServerName, ServerAlias, and DocumentRoot.
Use a2ensite and a2dissite to enable or disable sites, then reload or restart Apache so changes apply.
You can test without real DNS by editing your local hosts file to point your example domains at the server IP.

Prerequisites

Before you begin this tutorial, you will need:

An Ubuntu server with a non-root user with sudo privileges. You can use our Initial Server Setup with Ubuntu guide to set this up.
Apache installed on the server. You can learn how by completing steps 1-3 on our How To Install the Apache Web Server on Ubuntu tutorial.

If you are using DigitalOcean, you can learn how to set up domains by following our product documentation, How to add and set up domains.

In order to successfully complete this tutorial, you will need two domains with:

An A record with your_domain pointing to your server’s public IP address.
An A record with www.your_domain pointing to your server’s public IP address.

For other providers, please refer to their relevant product documentation.

Note: If you do not have domains available at this time, you can use test values locally on your computer. Step 6 of this tutorial will show you how to test and configure your test values. This will allow you to validate your configuration even though your content won’t be available to other visitors through the domain name.

Step 1 — Creating the Directory Structure

The first step is to create a directory structure that will hold the site data that you will be serving to visitors.

Your document root, the top-level directory that Apache looks at to find content to serve, will be set to individual directories under the /var/www directory. You will create a directory here for each of the virtual hosts.

Within each of these directories, you will create a public_html directory. The public_html directory contains the content that will be served to your visitors. The parent directories, named here as your_domain_1 and your_domain_2, will hold the scripts and application code to support the web content.

Use these commands, with your own domain names, to create your directories:

sudo mkdir -p /var/www/your_domain_1/public_html
sudo mkdir -p /var/www/your_domain_2/public_html

Be sure to replace your_domain_1 and your_domain_2 with your own respective domains. For example, if one of your domains was example.com you would create this directory structure: /var/www/example.com/public_html.

Step 2 — Granting Permissions

You’ve created the directory structure for your files, but they are owned by the root user. If you want your regular user to be able to modify files in these web directories, you can change the ownership with these commands:

sudo chown -R $USER:$USER /var/www/your_domain_1/public_html
sudo chown -R $USER:$USER /var/www/your_domain_2/public_html

The $USER variable will take the value of the user you are currently logged in as when you press ENTER. By doing this, the regular user now owns the public_html subdirectories where you will be storing your content.

You should also modify your permissions to ensure that read access is permitted to the general web directory and all of the files and folders it contains so that the pages can be served correctly:

sudo chmod -R 755 /var/www

Your web server now has the permissions it needs to serve content, and your user should be able to create content within the necessary folders. The next step is to create content for your virtual host sites.

Step 3 — Creating Default Pages for Each Virtual Host

With your directory structure in place, you can start focusing on each individual virtual host site and the content within that site. Start by creating an index.html page for your first site your_domain_1.

Open and create the index.html file with your preferred text editor. This example uses nano:

nano /var/www/your_domain_1/public_html/index.html

Within this file, create an HTML file that indicates to visitors which site they are connected to:

/var/www/your_domain_1/public_html/index.html

<html>
<head>
<title>Welcome to your_domain_1!</title>
</head>
<body>
<h1>Success! The your_domain_1 virtual host is working!</h1>
</body>
</html>

To save and close the file in nano, start by pressing CTRL+X. Press Y when prompted to save the file, then press ENTER when you are finished to exit.

Next, copy this file to use as the base for your second site by typing:

cp /var/www/your_domain_1/public_html/index.html /var/www/your_domain_2/public_html/index.html

Then open this new file and modify the relevant pieces of information using your text editor like before:

nano /var/www/your_domain_2/public_html/index.html

/var/www/your_domain_2/public_html/index.html

<html>
<head>
<title>Welcome to your_domain_2!</title>
</head>
<body> <h1>Success! The your_domain_2 virtual host is working!</h1>
</body>
</html>

Save and close this file. You now have one page for each site that you can use to test the virtual host configuration.

Step 4 — Creating New Virtual Host Files

Virtual host files specify the actual configuration of your virtual hosts and control how the Apache web server responds to different domain requests. For more on Apache’s layout and global options, see How To Configure the Apache Web Server on an Ubuntu or Debian VPS.

Apache comes with a default virtual host file called 000-default.conf. You can copy this file to create virtual host files for each of your domains.

Copy the default configuration file over to the first domain:

sudo cp /etc/apache2/sites-available/000-default.conf /etc/apache2/sites-available/your_domain_1.conf

Be aware that the default Ubuntu configuration requires that each virtual host file end in .conf.

Open the new file in your preferred text editor with root privileges:

sudo nano /etc/apache2/sites-available/your_domain_1.conf

With comments removed, the file will be similar to this: