Work in progress (update/expansion) since 20-01-2018

Intro

Before we can complete this:

We will first configure the server so we can create one Virtual Host directed at a DocumentRoot. After that you will find a small section with the commands to quickly create new Virtual Hosts knowing that the server is fully configured. However, the DocumentRoot method is not the only way to setup Virtual Hosts. Sometimes you have an application running on a specific port - think of Python and Node.js applications.

You will find that when you play around a lot with these Virtual Hosts (maybe you have a ton of side-projects…) that there is a need to automate this process using scripting. I do recommend you do not skip ahead to that section but try to understand what you are doing. If you are new to Linux (server) administration make sure you get a good grasp of the commands and terminology that is used. I try to include in-depth sources, but that is still a work in progress.

Do not worry about not understanding everything when you start out, you can practically copy paste through the steps and you will have a working Virtual Host.

Lastly there is a reference to a different article on how to setup encryption (TLS/SSL) using LetsEncrypt.

Customization

You can customize the guide by altering the desired website name in the text box below, the guide will use that instead of the example.

Website:

Installation & configuration

Update the repositories and install apache2 (some may prefer nginx, but this guide focuses on apache2 - beware there are definitive differences between the two).

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install apache2 -y

It is common practice to place the DocumentRoot of apache2 website in the /var/www/ directory. Within that directory you create separate directories for the different Virtual Hosts you intend to create.

sudo mkdir -p /var/www/#@WEBSITE@#

We change the ownership and permissions using chown and chmod.

sudo chown -R $USER:$USER /var/www/#@WEBSITE@#

sudo chmod -R 755 /var/www

Since this is our first website, we will add a simple index.html file to our DocumentRoot.

sudo nano /var/www/#@WEBSITE@#/index.html

If you do not have nano you can install it using apt sudo apt-get install nano but you can use any editor you like.

index.html
<html>
  <body>
    <div>#@WEBSITE@#!</div>
  </body>
</html>

In order to activate apache2 sites we need to add a .conf file to the sites-available directory. We can make a copy of the default .conf file and rename it using the following command.

sudo cp /etc/apache2/sites-available/000-default.conf /etc/apache2/sites-available/#@WEBSITE@#.conf

Before we can activate the .conf file we need to amend some variables, open the file using nano.

sudo nano /etc/apache2/sites-available/#@WEBSITE@#.conf

    ServerAdmin admin@#@WEBSITE@#
    ServerName #@WEBSITE@#
    ServerAlias www.#@WEBSITE@#
    DocumentRoot /var/www/#@WEBSITE@#

The ServerName, ServerAlias, and DocumentRoot variables are the most important. Apply changes and hit CTRL+X enter Y and hit return. The file is saved and we can activate the site using a2ensite.

sudo a2ensite #@WEBSITE@#.conf

Remove the default .conf using the a2dissite command.

sudo a2dissite 000-default.conf

Restart apache2 and the Virtual Host is running!

sudo systemctl restart apache2

Browse to #@WEBSITE@# and lo and behold, we have a Virtual Host.

Quickly adding new Virtual Hosts

We have now setup apache2 and added our first Virtual Host, the next one will be much easier!

Second website:

Generating creation scripts

If you have a bunch of Virtual Hosts to create, it would be much easier to generate the scripts. You can write these scripts yourself using bash, or you can use a small utility I have created. Click here to open the ‘VHGenerator’. I plan to create an article detailing the process, for now the Github repo will have to do.

Quick commands

Coming ASAP.