Apache – Frankie Inguanez

Virtual Hosts on Apache

Posted on 2012-02-10 by Frankie

Working on multiple Web Projects on the same system might become a headache to manage. You must use Virtual Hosts if you are using Apache as pointed out by David Kiss. Following are the steps required to create a Virtual Host called magento in your system such that when you type http://magento the site is displayed, as per Mac OS X Lion using MAMP:

Backup your files.
1. Open a terminal window.
2. Backup your hosts file:
  sudo cp /private/etc/hosts /private/etc/hosts.bak
3. Backup your Apache configuration file:
  cp /Applications/MAMP/conf/apache/httpd.conf /Applications/MAMP/conf/apache/httpd.conf.bak
4. Backup your Virtual Hosts configuration file:
  cp /Applications/MAMP/conf/apache/extra/httpd-vhosts.conf /Applications/MAMP/conf/apache/extra/httpd-vhosts.conf.bak
Update the hosts file.
1. Edit the hosts file:
  sudo nano /private/etc/hosts
2. Add the name of the Virtual Host you want on your system:
  127.0.0.1 magento
3. Save and exit:
  Press Ctrl+X then Y.
Update the Apache configuration file.
1. Edit the Apache configuration file:
  nano /Applications/MAMP/conf/apache/httpd.conf
2. Un-comment the line where httpd-vhosts.conf is found such that it looks like this:
  Include /Applications/MAMP/conf/apache/extra/httpd-vhosts.conf
3. Save and exit:
  Press Ctrl-W then Y
Update the Virtual Hosts configuration file.
1. Edit the configuration file:
  nano /Applications/MAMP/conf/apache/extra/httpd-vhosts.conf
2. At the end add the following:
  <VirtualHost *:80>
  ServerName magento
  DocumentRoot /Users/fraki/Sites/magento
  </VirtualHost>
3. Save and exit:
  Press Ctrl-X then Y
Place the site contents in the folder specified.
Navigate to the virtual host.

Virtual Hosts Navigation — Using Virtual hosts

You might want to check the official documentation of Apache about Virtual Hosts, in this post I am using name-based virtual hosts.

Configuring SSL for Apache on OS X Lion using MAMP

Posted on 2012-02-10 by Frankie

After self-signing an SSL certificate for development purposes the Web server needs to be configured appropriately. I found the posting by Dave Kiss to be the best one. Following are the required steps if you used the default MAMP settings:

Backup your configuration files:
1. Open a terminal window.
2. Go to the Apache configuration folder:
  cd /Applications/MAMP/conf/apache
3. Backup the Apache configuration file:
  cp httpd.conf httpd.conf.bak
4. Backup the SSL configuration file:
  cp extra/httpd-ssl.conf extra/httpd-ssl.conf.bak
Update the Apache configuration file:
1. Open the configuration file using an editor of your choice:
  nano httpd.conf
2. Search for the line containing httpd-ssl.conf:
  Press Ctrl-W then type httpd-ssl.conf
3. Uncomment the line by removing the # from the beginning such that it reads:
  Include /Applications/MAMP/conf/apache/extra/httpd-ssl.conf
4. Save and exit:
  Press Ctrl-X the Y
Copy the server.key and server.crt file to your Apache configuration folder.
Start the servers through the MAMP interface.
Navigate to your site through a browser using https:
https://localhost

Accept Certificate — Accept self-signed certificate

N.B. If the apache server fails to start then you have an error in your configuration, make sure you replace the DocumentRoot in your SSL configuration file to match your actual root folder.

N.B. Dave’s post also contains steps to configure Virtual Hosts which I left out for a different posting to be less confusing.

N.B. Dave’s post using git to backup the files, in this post I simply make a copy of the configuration file, if you want to restore the backup simply type: cp httpd.conf.bak httpd.conf or any other file you want to restore.