Setup Apache Virtual Host on CentOS 7 Step by Step

Jul 27, 2019
Article · 3 min
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In this guide, you are going to set up a virtual host on CentOS 7 server. To install Apache on your server, you can read this article Install Apache on CentOS 7. Let’s set up a virtual host.

Create Public Directory
Create Log Files
Assign Ownership
Configure Virtual Host
Adjust SELinux Permissions
Test the Virtual Host

Step 1 : Create Public Directory

We are going to host example.com on our server. Create the public directory of your website:

sudo mkdir -p /var/www/example.com/public_html

We have used -p flag to create necessary parent directories.

Make a index.html file:

sudo nano /var/www/example.com/public_html/index.html

Write a sample HTML code:

<html>
  <head>
    <title>Welcome</title>
  </head>
  <body>
    <h1>Welcome to example.com</h1>
  </body>
</html>

Step 2 : Create Log Files

Create a log folder to store log data:

sudo mkdir -p /var/www/example.com/log

Create two log files:

sudo touch /var/www/example.com/log/error.log
sudo touch /var/www/example.com/log/access.log

Step 3 : Assign Ownership

Assign ownership of the public_html directory. I’m going to provide ownership to apache user. You can provide to any user you want.

sudo chown -R apache:apache /var/www/example.com/public_html

Ensure default permissions for root user:

sudo chmod -R 755 /var/www

Step 4 : Configure Virtual Host

We have to create two directories called sites-available and sites-enabled. Apache store website in sites-available folder and Apache server website from sites-enabled folder. Let’s make these folders:

sudo mkdir /etc/httpd/sites-available /etc/httpd/sites-enabled

Open httpd.conf file using this command:

sudo nano /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf

Add this line to the end of the file:

IncludeOptional sites-enabled/*.conf

After that let’s make a configuration file in the sites-available directory:

sudo nano /etc/httpd/sites-available/example.com.conf

Now paste this configuration block:

<VirtualHost *:80>
    ServerAdmin [email protected]
    ServerName example.com
    ServerAlias www.example.com
    DocumentRoot /var/www/example.com/public_html

	<Directory /var/www/example.com/public_html>
		Options Indexes FollowSymLinks
		AllowOverride All
		Require all granted
	</Directory>

    ErrorLog /var/www/example.com/log/error.log
    CustomLog /var/www/example.com/log/access.log combined
</VirtualHost>

We have to create a symbolic link for each virtual host in the sites-enableddirectory:

sudo ln -s /etc/httpd/sites-available/example.com.conf /etc/httpd/sites-enabled/example.com.conf

Our virtual host is configured and ready to serve.

Step 5 : Adjust SELinux Permissions

It’s recommended to adjust SELinux permissions. Run this command to set universal permissions:

sudo setsebool -P httpd_unified 1

Step 6 : Test the Virtual Host

Restart the web server and visit the website to see the welcome message.

sudo systemctl restart httpd

The article is over. Thanks for reading.

Md Obydullah

Software Engineer | Ethical Hacker & Cybersecurity...

Md Obydullah is a software engineer and full stack developer specialist at Laravel, Django, Vue.js, Node.js, Android, Linux Server, and Ethichal Hacking.