VirtualHost is a term that refers to hosting multiple websites on the same web server, like hosting “example.com” and “example.org” on the same server. In this tutorial, I’ll show you how to set up a Name-Based Virtual server in macOS. You just have to configure your hosts file to map each hostname to the same IP address and then configure the Apache HTTP Server to recognize the different hostnames.

Note: macOS X Mavericks (10.9) is very outdated. For modern macOS versions, the Apache configuration path and methods may differ. Also, macOS now uses systemd or launchd for service management instead of apachectl in some cases.

Just follow simple Steps .

Enable Virtual Hosts

Open “ /etc/apache2/httpd.conf ”

open terminal

sudo nano /etc/apache2/httpd.conf

Find Virtual Host include line and Uncomment  ( remove # sign from front ) that line

# Virtual hosts
Include /private/etc/apache2/extra/httpd-vhosts.conf

Setup Virtual Host 

Save that file . and open  /etc/apache2/extra/httpd-vhosts.conf File
“

NameVirtualHost *:80

<VirtualHost *:80>

        ServerAdmin admin@example.com
        DocumentRoot "/Users/alok/Sites/example"
        ServerName example.com
        ServerAlias www.example.com
        ErrorLog "/private/var/log/apache2/example.com"
        CustomLog "/private/var/log/apache2/example.com" common

        # Other directives here

        <directory "/Users/alok/Sites/example">
                Options Indexes MultiViews FollowSymLinks
                AllowOverride All
                Order allow,deny
                Allow from all
        </Directory>

</VirtualHost>

setup

Now setup Host File to point at localhost as example.com

open /etc/hosts

sudo nano /etc/hosts

and add
 127.0.0.1 example.com

 

And restart the web server. Open Terminal and type sudo apachectl restart, then open your browser and navigate to example.com. Now example.com will point to your local web server.

Note: On modern macOS versions, you might need to use sudo brew services restart httpd if you installed Apache via Homebrew, or use System Preferences to manage the service.

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