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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-13T08:09:01+00:00

I am trying to write about 5 websites all on one Apache server which

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I am trying to write about 5 websites all on one Apache server which is all on one IP address.

For example:

  • /var/www/site1
  • /var/www/site2
  • /var/www/site3
  • /var/www/site4
  • /var/www/site5

However, if I create a link on site 2 just using, for example. /index.php, you would expect it to look in /var/www/site2/index.php… but it actually resolves to /var/www/index.php.

Is there anyway of setting up Apache to know that the separate site folders need to behave and resolve to the separate folders?

This is my sites-available file at the moment. A fairly default setup I believe:

<VirtualHost *:80>
    ServerAdmin webmaster@localhost

    DocumentRoot /var/www
    <Directory />
            Options FollowSymLinks
            AllowOverride None
    </Directory>
    <Directory /var/www/>
            Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews
            AllowOverride all
            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>

Any help would be apreciated.

Thank-you kindly.

Andrew Barlow

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    You need a ServerName directive inside the <VirtualHost>. It will tell the server which virtual host is currently in use depending on the browser request (if your client access http://site1.example.com or http://site2.example.com, they will connect to the same IP, hence server, but the request contains the original request url).
    You’ll have to duplicate your <VirtualHost> block to have one per hosted site. Each block will differ by their ServerName and DocumentRoot mainly.
    You can use “apache2ctl -S” to see how apache understood your virtual host settings.

    You can use a single file with this kind of content :

    <VirtualHost *:80>
  ServerName site1.myserver.com
  DocumentRoot /var/www/site1
  ...
</VirtualHost>

<VirtualHost *:80>
  ServerName site2.myserver.com
  DocumentRoot /var/www/site2
  ...
</VirtualHost>

<VirtualHost *:80>
  ServerName site3.myserver.com
  DocumentRoot /var/www/site3
  ...
</VirtualHost>

<VirtualHost *:80>
  ServerName site4.myserver.com
  DocumentRoot /var/www/site4
  ...
</VirtualHost>

<VirtualHost *:80>
  ServerName site5.myserver.com
  DocumentRoot /var/www/site5
  ...
</VirtualHost>

    Of course, maybe sure that the dns for all of those name ends up on your IP. It needs not to be subdomains as long as they land on your server ip and you have a correspond ServerName for it. If you need extra names for a single site, you can add them with “ServerAlias secondname.myserver.com thirdname.myserver.com” below ServerName

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