Linux server subdomains for multiple sites

Question

I have 2 websites i want to host on a Linux machine using Apache server. Since at this point i am unable to acquire a domain name, i access the server through IP, since I'm not required to have one yet. The first site is comprised of a few HTML pages and is located in /var/hostroot/lifeonearth/{all files here} and the other is comprised of several PHP pages located in /var/hostroot/webDarts/{all files here}. By default when i go to my IP address, it takes me to the default "Your Apache server is working" page. So from here on, how do i make it so that i can access each site through some sort of subdomain like lifeonearth.(my IP) or webDarts.(my IP) or, am I supposed to access them throug different ports. If it's the latter, how do I go about it?

Answer 1

We have 2 website names.

1. example1.test.local  (/var/www/example1) 
2. example2.test.local (/var/www/example2)

Now Lets create two files called example1 and example2 in /etc/apache2/sites-available.

example1 file looks like as follows

<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerAdmin webmaster@localhost
DocumentRoot /var/www/example1
ServerName example1.test.local
<Directory />
    Options FollowSymLinks
    AllowOverride None
</Directory>
<Directory /var/www/example1>
    Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews
    AllowOverride None
    Order allow,deny
    allow from all
</Directory>

ScriptAlias /cgi-bin/ /usr/lib/cgi-bin/
<Directory "/usr/lib/cgi-bin">
    AllowOverride None
    Options +ExecCGI -MultiViews +SymLinksIfOwnerMatch
    Order allow,deny
    Allow from all
</Directory>

ErrorLog /var/log/apache2/error.log

# Possible values include: debug, info, notice, warn, error, crit,
# alert, emerg.
LogLevel warn

CustomLog /var/log/apache2/access.log combined

Alias /doc/ "/usr/share/doc/"
<Directory "/usr/share/doc/">
    Options Indexes MultiViews FollowSymLinks
    AllowOverride None
    Order deny,allow
    Deny from all
    Allow from 127.0.0.0/255.0.0.0 ::1/128
</Directory>

as the same way create another file called example2 and modify the following lines

DocumentRoot /var/www/example2
ServerName example2.test.local

and

<Directory /var/www/example2>
    Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews
    AllowOverride None
    Order allow,deny
    allow from all
</Directory>

rest of the file will same as example1.

Then enable those two sites

a2ensite example1
a2ensite example2

Then do apache service restart.

Now we have to do DNS pointing

If your Linux machine is LOCAL then go to your Windows machine where you want to access these websites and open the following file C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts

and mention your ip and website name

192.168.249.101 example1.test.local
192.168.249.101 example2.test.local

Thats it! If you found any difficulties please let me know.

I have replicated this scenario at my end and it works for me. Hope it will work for you!