Virtual Host

The term Virtual Host refers to the practice of maintaining multiple servers on one machine, each server being defined by it’s hostname (domain).  See the Apache Virtual Host documentation for more information.

How to create an Apache HTTP Virtual Host

  1. You must first Install and Configure Apache HTTP Server
    See our Apache HTTP Server documentation
  2. You must also install and configure the mod_ssl Apache module
    See our Apache mod_ssl documentation
  3. Create/Open the file /etc/httpd/conf.d/$domain.conf with the following text replacing variables where necessary
    # $domain HTTP Virtual Host
    <VirtualHost *:80>
    # General
    ServerAdmin $webmaster_email
    DocumentRoot /var/www/html/$domain
    ServerName www.$domain
    ServerAlias $domain

    # Logging
    ErrorLog logs/$domain-error_log
    CustomLog logs/$domain-access_log common
    </VirtualHost>

  4. Restart the Apache HTTP Server daemon
    service httpd restart

How to create an Apache HTTPS Virtual Host

  1. You must first Install and Configure Apache HTTP Server
    See our Apache HTTP Server documentation
  2. You must also install and configure the mod_ssl Apache module
    See our Apache mod_ssl documentation
  3. Create/Open the file /etc/httpd/conf.d/$domain.conf with the following text replacing variables where necessary
    # $domain HTTPS Virtual Host
    <VirtualHost *:443>
    # General
    ServerAdmin $webmaster_email
    DocumentRoot /var/www/html/$domain
    ServerName www.$domain
    ServerAlias $domain

    # Logging
    ErrorLog logs/$domain-ssl_error_log
    TransferLog logs/$domain-ssl_access_log
    CustomLog logs/$domain-ssl_request_log “%t %h %{SSL_PROTOCOL}x %{SSL_CIPHER}x \”%r\” %b”
    LogLevel warn

    # SSL Engine
    SSLEngine on

    # SSL Protocol
    SSLProtocol all -SSLv2

    # SSL Cipher Suite
    SSLCipherSuite LL:!ADH:!EXPORT:!SSLv2:RC4+RSA:+HIGH:+MEDIUM:+LOW

    # Server Certificate
    SSLCertificateFile /etc/pki/CA/certs/$domain.crt

    # Server Private Key
    SSLCertificateKeyFile /etc/pki/CA/private/$domain.key

    # SSL Engine Options
    <Files ~ “\.(cgi|shtml|phtml|php3?)$”>
    SSLOptions +StdEnvVars
    </Files>
    <Directory “/var/www/cgi-bin”>
    SSLOptions +StdEnvVars
    </Directory>

    # SSL Protocol Adjustments:
    SetEnvIf User-Agent “.*MSIE.*” nokeepalive ssl-unclean-shutdown owngrade-1.0 force-response-1.0
    </VirtualHost>

  4. Restart the Apache HTTP Server daemon
    service httpd restart
    Note: See our OpenSSL documentation for creating test certificates

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