How to Create a Virtual Host: A Step-By-Step Guide

Different Ways To Configure Virtual Hosting

Challenges You Will Experience With Virtual Web Hosting

Let’s create a virtual host by using the Apache hosts and the Ubuntu OS. We use both of these because they are user-friendly, reliable, and most trusted.

Step 1: Update The Softaware

The prerequisites for the creation of a virtual host are Ubuntu OS and Apache installation. You can do it using the following commands if you don’t have Apache installed.

sudo apt-get update

Step 2: Install Apache Software

Now, install the apache software on the operating system such as Ubuntu with the following command:

sudo apt-get install apache2

Let’s start with the step-by-step process.

Step 3: Directory structure creation

In the first step, we will create a directory structure to store the website data or accept data from visitors. You need to use the following command under the document root – /var/www directory.

sudo mkdir -p /var/www/app2.pranshtech.com/public_html

Step 4: Give Permissions

Generally, root users have ownership of the directory structure. However, you can change it using the following command.

sudo chown -R $USER : $YOUR_USER_NAME/var/www/app2.pranshtech.com/public_html

Step 5: Creation of the demo page for every virtual host

Now, we will create a sample test page for pranshtech.com. To create it, you can use vi or any other editor.
Type the following command to create the demo page for pranshtech.com

vi /var/www/app2.pranshtech.com/public_html/index.html

In the index.html file, you need to type the following basic HTML code.

<html>

<head>

<title>Home Page of pranshtech.com <title>

</head>

<body>

<h1>Hurrah! The virtual host of app2. pranshtech.com is working properly. </h1>

</body>

</html>

Step 6: New file setup

Apache contains the default host configuration file named 000-default.conf. We will use the same to set up the new file for our virtual host.
So, let’s copy this file to pranshtech.com using the following command.

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

Once the file is copied, you can open it using your preferred editor.

<VirtualHost *:80>

ServerAdmin webmaster@localhost

DocumentRoot /var/www/html

ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/error.log

CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/access.log combined

</VirtualHost>

Now, change the email address. ServerAdmin admin@pranshtech.com , In the next step, add ServerName and ServerAlias using the following command.

ServerName  pranshtech.com
ServerAlias    www.app2.pranshtech.com

Now, the final step is to change the document root’s location. Use this command for it.

DocumentRoot /var/www/app2.pranshtech.com/public_html.

Step 7: File Enabling

Let’s enable our virtual files through the following command.

sudo a2ensite app2.pranshtech.com.conf

Once it is done, you need to restart the Apache server.

sudo service apache2 restart

Step 8: Test Web Hosting

It is result time. Open your web browser and enter pranshtech.com. You will see the result like this –

Hurrah! The virtual host of pranshtech.com is working properly.

How Does Virtual Hosting Works?

Your tech stack’s performance and speed greatly matter in today’s tech-centric digital era. Investing in these tools is quite expensive as it costs thousands of bucks to maintain them. That’s why, as a business owner, you can make a prudent decision to find some middle ways to get things done in zero-to-nominal investments.

One such way is to opt for virtual web hosting, as it will help you cut your IT costs. And the best thing about virtual hosting is that you don’t need to compromise on quality. Virtual web hosting lets you have your business’s online presence without much tech knowledge and resources. Without further ado, let’s dive into it.