Virtual host questions

[SiberianHuskey]

When you are adding a line to the host file like this

127.0.0.1 localhost mywebsite

And by telling the httpd-vhosts.conf file what line you added to the host file what is going on ?

Have you set the include path in the php,ini to point to the right place(s)? The section in the php.ini will look like:

;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;
; Paths and Directories ;
;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;

; UNIX: "/path1:/path2"
;include_path = ".:/php/includes"
;
; Windows: "\path1;\path2"
include_path = ".;c:\php\includes;c:\php\example"

Add one for each web app, separating them with a ;

Do you have to worry about this and what does this relate to with client request ?

[decowski]

Adding a host to the hosts file tells your system what IP it should connect to when asked to connect to the hostname. In this case you are telling that for localhost and mywebsite the IP address is 127.0.0.1. This IP address is so called loopback mechanism, which means that any traffic sent to that IP is sent to the very same machine which sent it (your own machine).

Adding a hostname to Apache VirtualHost configuration tells Apache how a request for the hostname should be handled. For instance you can specify which directory should be the document root for the requests (from which directory it should serve files).

include_path directive is PHP-specific and has nothing to do with client requests.

[SiberianHuskey]

Adding a host to the hosts file tells your system what IP it should connect to when asked to connect to the hostname. In this case you are telling that for localhost and mywebsite the IP address is 127.0.0.1. This IP address is so called loopback mechanism, which means that any traffic sent to that IP is sent to the very same machine which sent it (your own machine).

Are you saying that you can also used http://localhost/mywebsite ?
How come if your using a virtual server like XAMPP the path name is not http://localhost/XAMPP/<whateverdirectory> in my case it's http://localhost/<whateverdirectory>

Adding a hostname to Apache VirtualHost configuration tells Apache how a request for the hostname should be handled. For instance you can specify which directory should be the document root for the requests (from which directory it should serve files).

I don't understand.

include_path directive is PHP-specific and has nothing to do with client requests.

What does it have to do with, I took some parts from another thread so I want to understand.

[crowden]

Look for something similar to this in your vhosts config file

<VirtualHost 127.0.0.1>
ServerName localhost
DocumentRoot "C:\path\to\www"
</VirtualHost>

This gives "localhost" a directory to go to when you type it in the address bar.

Since you added "mywebsite" to your host file you need to give it a directory as well. Just add this to the end of your vhosts config file.

<VirtualHost 127.0.0.1>
ServerName mywebsite
DocumentRoot "C:\path\to\www\mywebsite"
</VirtualHost>

So, "mywebsite" is the request and "C:\path\to\www\mywebsite" is the directory that serves the files for that request.

[SiberianHuskey]

Where do I find my vhosts config file ? Are you saying that I can change
where currently have to go to http://localhost/test I can change that in the vhost config file ? And if so I'm a bit lost where the host file comes into all this?

[crowden]

It's the httpd-vhosts.conf file you mentioned in your first post. You can use your computer's search program to find the file.

If you're using XAMPP, Google "virtual hosts xampp"...there are plenty of walkthroughs out there.

[SiberianHuskey]

Alright I'll do a little google reading And I found the file so thank you.