macos - How to create virtual hosts in MAMP?

Question

I am new to Mac but used Ubuntu for development for a long time. I know how to create virtual hosts in Ubuntu but have no idea about Mac. I have created a hosts entry like below :

##
# Host Database
#
# localhost is used to configure the loopback interface
# when the system is booting.  Do not change this entry.
##
127.0.0.1       localhost mysite.loc
255.255.255.255 broadcasthost
::1             localhost

But what to do next?

Answer 1

While googling, I found these steps to easily create virtual hosts on MAMP:

1. Open your console in mac and edit your hosts file like this

   sudo vim /etc/hosts

This opens a system file that contains the following line:

127.0.0.1    localhost

add your desired host name after local host:

127.0.0.1    localhost mysite.loc

press ESC, then :wq! to overwrite and close the file.

2. Now go to your MAMP directory and open apache config file located at /Applications/MAMP/conf/apache/httpd.conf in any text editor and locate the following lines:

# Virtual Hosts
# Include /Applications/MAMP/conf/apache/extra/httpd-vhosts.conf

Remove the hash (pound) sign from the beginning of the line that begins with Include

# Virtual Hosts
Include /Applications/MAMP/conf/apache/extra/httpd-vhosts.conf

Save the file, and then open Applications/MAMP/conf/apache/extra/httpd-vhosts.conf. This is where you define the virtual hosts.

3. At the bottom of the page are two examples of how to define virtual hosts in Apache. They look like this:

<VirtualHost *:80>
    ServerAdmin [email protected]
    DocumentRoot "/Applications/MAMP/Library/docs/dummy-host.example.com"
    ServerName dummy-host.example.com
    ServerAlias www.dummy-host.example.com
    ErrorLog "logs/dummy-host.example.com-error_log"
    CustomLog "logs/dummy-host.example.com-access_log" common
</VirtualHost>

<VirtualHost *:80>
    ServerAdmin [email protected]
    DocumentRoot "/Applications/MAMP/Library/docs/dummy-host2.example.com"
    ServerName dummy-host2.example.com
    ErrorLog "logs/dummy-host2.example.com-error_log"
    CustomLog "logs/dummy-host2.example.com-access_log" common
</VirtualHost>

Edit both examples. Virtual hosts override the existing localhost, so the first one needs to re-establish localhost. Edit the second one for the virtual host you want to add. Only the DocumentRoot and ServerName directives are required. To add a virtual host for mysite, the edited definitions should look like this:

<VirtualHost *:80>
    DocumentRoot /Applications/MAMP/htdocs
    ServerName localhost
</VirtualHost>

<VirtualHost *:80>
    DocumentRoot "/Users/username/Sites/mysite"
    ServerName mysite.loc
</VirtualHost>

This assumes that you want to locate the files for mysite in your Sites folder. Replace "username" in the second definition with your own Mac username. If you want to store the files in a different location, adjust the value of DocumentRoot accordingly.

If you want to create more than one virtual host, copy one of the definitions, and edit it accordingly.

Save all the files you have edited, and restart the servers in the MAMP control panel. You should now be able to access the virtual host with the following URL: http://mysite.loc/.

Enjoy..!!