Update 9/20/2011 – Check out http://webdevtuts.co.uk/tutorials/set-multiple-virtual-hosts-wamp/ for another really great way to setup vhosts.
If you’re using WAMP for your local development, here’s how to setup virtual hosts. This comes in handy when you’re dealing with frameworks like Zend or Joomla and setting up a WAMP alias won’t do. Keep in mind I’m doing this in Windows XP and WAMP 2.0 so file locations may vary.
- Open C:\wamp\bin\apache\Apache2.2.11\conf\httpd.conf and uncomment the virtual hosts include and save:
- Open your windows host file, C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc\hosts , and add the name you want to use for your virtual host.
- Open C:\wamp\bin\apache\Apache2.2.11\conf\extra\httpd-vhosts.conf and add your “VirtualHost” blocks similar to what I’ve done below. I also added a VirtualHost block for “localhost” so that I could continue to see the WAMP menu from “http://localhost/”. Out of laziness, I coppied the directory paths straight from Windows Explorer so that’s why you’re seeing a mix case of forward and back slashes in my paths but it doesn’t seem to hurt it. Don’t worry if the error log files don’t exist. Apache will create them.
- Restart WAMP and you should now be able to access your site via the virtual host. Since I didn’t setup “www.rob 127.0.0.1” in my host file I can’t access it via http://www.rob/ but via http://rob/.
Lastly, be careful using your computer name as a virtual host name. You may get unexpected results.
Well explained
Hi
Thanks for the tutorial. Seems so simple but I guess I am not succeeding because of a simple error. This is my entry in httpd-vhosts file:
ServerAdmin webmaster@testsite
DocumentRoot “/websites”
ServerName testsite
Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews
AllowOverride all
Order deny,allow
Allow from all
I am getting this error “Forbidden
You don’t have permission to access / on this server.” when I enter testsite (which is the name of the folder saved under c://websites) on the browser address.
Could U guide me plZ