Recipe 4.3 Setting Up Address-Based Virtual Hosts

Problem

You have multiple IP addresses assigned to your system, and you want to support one web site on each.

Solution

Create a virtual host section for each IP address you want to list on:

ServerName 127.0.0.1

<VirtualHost 10.0.0.1>
    ServerName TheSmiths.name
    DocumentRoot "C:/Apache/Sites/TheSmiths"
</VirtualHost>

<VirtualHost 10.0.0.2>
    ServerName JohnSmith.name
    DocumentRoot "C:/Apache/Sites/JustJohnSmith"
</VirtualHost>

Discussion

The virtual hosts defined in this example catch all requests to the specified IP addresses, regardless of what hostname is used to get there. Requests to any other IP address not listed go to the virtual host listed in the main body of the configuration file.

The ServerName specified is used as the primary name of the virtual host, when needed, but is not used in the process of mapping a request to the correct host. Only the IP address is consulted to figure out which virtual host to serve requests from, not the Host header field.

See Also

• http://httpd.apache.org/docs/vhosts/