How to run multiple web-sites on localhost with Apache

Please help a newbie. I've recently installed LAMP on Ubuntu 22.04. Apache version: Apache/2.4.52

What I am trying to do is to enable multiple web-sites on my localhost. I’ve read and followed a few posts on this topic however I can’t make it work.

So this is what I’ve done so far to create two sites "prj1" and "prj2":

1. Created two folders

sudo mkdir /var/www/prj1
sudo mkdir /var/www/prj2

2. Created two index files in the folders:

sudo gedit /var/www/prj1/index.html
sudo gedit /var/www/prj2/index.html

They are simple, the first states:

Web prj 1. Location:


/var/www/prj1

The second:

Web prj 2. Location:


/var/www/prj2

3. Set permissions:

sudo chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www
sudo chown -R 775 /var/www
sudo chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/prj1
sudo chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/prj2

4. Created .conf files for each project: sudo gedit /etc/apache2/sites-available/prj1.conf

<VirtualHost *:80>
     ServerAdmin admin@prj1
     ServerName prj1
     
     DocumentRoot /var/www/prj1/
     <Directory />
        Options FollowSymLinks
        AllowOverride None
     </Directory>     
     <Directory /var/www/prj1/>
        Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews
        AllowOverride All
        Order allow,deny
        allow from all
     </Directory>

     ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/prj1.webdock.io_error.log
     CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/prj1.webdock.io_access.log combined
</VirtualHost>

sudo gedit /etc/apache2/sites-available/prj2.conf

<VirtualHost *:80>
     ServerAdmin admin@prj2
     ServerName prj2
     
     DocumentRoot /var/www/prj2/
     <Directory />
        Options FollowSymLinks
        AllowOverride None
     </Directory>     
     <Directory /var/www/prj2/>
        Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews
        AllowOverride All
        Order allow,deny
        allow from all
     </Directory>

     ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/prj2.webdock.io_error.log
     CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/prj2.webdock.io_access.log combined
</VirtualHost>

5. Enabled sites:

a2ensite prj1
a2ensite prj2

6. Edited apache2.conf: sudo gedit /etc/apache2/apache2.conf

I’ve added the following:

<Directory /var/www/>
    Options Indexes FollowSymLinks
    AllowOverride All
    Require all granted
</Directory>

DocumentRoot "/var/www/prj1"
<Directory "/var/www/prj1">
            Options FollowSymLinks
            AllowOverride All
            Require all granted
</Directory>

DocumentRoot "/var/www/prj2"
<Directory "/var/www/prj2">
            Options FollowSymLinks
            AllowOverride All
            Require all granted
</Directory>

7. Added two lines in /etc/hosts: sudo gedit /etc/hosts

127.0.0.1 localhost prj1
127.0.0.1 localhost prj2

8. Restarted Apache:

systemctl restart apache2

Now I am using the following URI in the browser:

http://prj1.localhost/

this works as expected, it shows:

Web prj 1. Location:


/var/www/prj1

However if I use http://prj2.localhost/ it still shows the first site

Web prj 1. Location:


/var/www/prj1

What do I do wrong?

Thank you, Alex

I've found what the problem was. In the prj2.conf the port for prj2 was 81 not 80. Honestly I don't know how that happened, I can't even say it was a typo since the whole text was copy/pasted. Anyways, after I changed it to 80 both sites are now working.

In the file /etc/host the lines should be

127.0.0.1 prj1

127.0.0.1 prj2

The URLs are to be http://prj1 and http://prj2. The only thing is that the browser tells that connection to the sites "Not secure" (I don't know why).

I thank all the contributors to the post.

Regards, Alex

Step 7 should be:

127.0.0.1 prj1.localhost
127.0.0.1 prj2.localhost

According to documentation, /etc/hosts file needs to have one line per IP address. So you should put all hostnames that refer to 127.0.0.1 in one line, like:

127.0.0.1 localhost prj1 prj2

Also I'm not sure why you are using plain hostnames prj1 and prj2 both in your hosts file and in ServerName directives in Apache config, but are using prj1.localhost and prj2.localhost in the URLs. I would rather try just http://prj1/ and http://prj2/.