How to Host Multiple Websites on an Ubuntu 18.04 VPS or Dedicated Server

Prerequisites

• Ubuntu 18.04 VPS
• A non-root user with sudo privileges
• Apache web server

In case you don’t have apache installed, you can run the command below on your Ubuntu 18.04 server:

Also we will be using example.com and test.com as our dummy domain values and later we will show you how to edit the local hosts file on your computer to test the virtual hosts.

Step 1: Making the file/directory structure

First, we will need to create a directory structure that will host our websites data. Apache has a top-level directory where it looks for websites under the /var/www path. We will need to expand this and create sub-directory for our two domains.

To do this, run the commands below on a terminal window:

Step 2: Changing directory ownership

The directories we created above are owned by the root user. Therefore we need to change the directory ownership in order to allow the current logged user to modify files. We will use the chown command to do this with the syntax below

Step 3: Modify file permissions

We need to grant read access to the two directories that we created above. This will make the web pages publicly accessible and this means our two websites will be served correctly when requested by a browser.

To do this, we use the command below:

Step 4: Create sample web content for each virtual host/domain

Our files and directory structure are now configured correctly. Next, we will create a sample index.html file for each website using the nano editor using the commands below:

test.com

Copy paste the text below on the nano editor

example.com

Copy paste the text below on the nano editor

Remember to close and save each file when you are done editing by pressing CTR+X and Y.

Step 5: Create the virtual hosts configuration files for our two sites

When Apache is first installed on Ubuntu 18.04 server, it creates a default virtual host file on the path /etc/apache2/sites-available/000-default.conf.

We need to copy that file and use it to configure our text.com and example.com virtual hosts. To do this, run the command below

Apache configuration files must end with a “.config” file extension.

Once you have copied the files, open the first virtual hosts file on a nano editor to edit its content using the command below:

Then overwrite the values with the text below:

As you can see above, we have referenced the directory /var/www/test.com/public_html because this is where we will place our test.com website’s files.

We need to repeat the same procedure for our example.com virtual host

Then overwrite the files with the content below:

Step 6: Enable the two virtual hosts

We created two configuration files for our virtual hosts. We now need to enable them using the commands below:

Step 7: Restart Apache for the changes to take effect

Once you add a virtual host on your Ubuntu 18.04 server, you will need to restart apache using the command below:

Step 8: Edit the local hosts file on your computer

Your virtual hosts should be up and running. However because we used dummy values for testing purposes, we need to edit our local hosts file (on the local computer) and not the VPS server.

This will allow our local computer to resolve to the correct public IP address of our Ubuntu 18.04 server. Assuming your public Ubuntu 18.04 server’s IP address is 222.222.222.222, you will have to add this entries on your local computer.

If you are running linux, you need to edit the /etc/hosts file using the command below

Then add the below entries and save the file.

If your local computer is running Windows, you need to edit the file c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts using a text editor like notepad and append the two entries above as shown below.

Remember to replace 111.111.111.111 with the real public IP address of your server

Step 9: Test your virtual hosts on your browser

Finally you need to visit example.com and test.com on your browser and if you followed the steps correctly, you should see the content we created for the virtual hosts as shown below.