Setting up virtual host

WAMP or  XAMPP server lets our sites to browse by using the url:  http://localhost. For eg: http://localhost/mysite.

But we may need to test out environments which would require different domains, like http://local.server.com.


For this, we need to configure the virtual hosts file of our apache server.

These are the steps we need to configure vitual host on windows os:

1. Open vhosts.conf file. Location: xampp/apache/conf/extra
2. Add the following code at the end of the file.

<VirtualHost *:80>
    DocumentRoot "D:\xampp\htdocs"
    ServerName localhost
</VirtualHost>
<VirtualHost local.server.com:80> <!-- this is the vitual host -->
    DocumentRoot "D:\xampp\htdocs"
    ServerName local.server.com
    <Directory "D:\xampp\htdocs">
        Order allow,deny
        Allow from all
    </Directory>
</VirtualHost>

3. Edit the windows hosts file residing at C:/Windows/System32/drivers/etc/hosts. Add the following code at the end of the file.
127.0.0.1 local.server.com

4. Save and restart apache server.

5. Now we can browse our site using the url: http://local.server.com/sitename