Apache ReWrite Module

Apache has a very powerful tool (mod_rewrite) which can be used to redirect/rewrite requested URLs on the fly.

To use this module, you can configure apache with the '--enable-rewrite' option before compilation. Then, set 'RewriteEngine on' in the httpd.conf to start using it.

For complete details, please go to http://httpd.apache.org/docs/1.3/mod/mod_rewrite.html.

I will give a brief example which redirects all requests on http://www.localhost.com/ to http://localhost.com/ (I needed to do something like this for a site) and any request starting with '/redir/xyz' will execute '/test.php/redir/xyz'.

Following is copied from the httpd.conf.

...
...
NameVirtualHost 127.0.0.1:80

<VirtualHost 127.0.0.1:80>
ServerAdmin your@email.com
DocumentRoot /usr/local/apache/htdocs
ServerName localhost.com
ServerAlias localhost.com
RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^/redir/(.*) /test.php/redir/$1 [QSA,PT,L]
RewriteLog logs/rewrite_log
RewriteLogLevel 3
ErrorLog logs/local_error_log
CustomLog logs/local_access_log common
</VirtualHost>

<VirtualHost 127.0.0.1:80>
ServerAdmin your@email.com
DocumentRoot /usr/local/apache/htdocs
ServerName www.localhost.com
ServerAlias www.localhost.com
RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^/(.*) http://localhost.com/$1 [QSA,R,L]
RewriteLog logs/rewrite1_log
RewriteLogLevel 3
ErrorLog logs/local1_error_log
CustomLog logs/local1_access_log common
</VirtualHost>

Hosting multiple sites on a single server using the same IP

Apache has a great feature which allows hosting multiple sites using the same apache instance and even the same IP address. To know more click here

Following example shows how this can be done.

Open the httpd.conf configuration file which is being used by apache.

Add following at the end:

NameVirtualHost 127.0.0.1:80

<VirtualHost 127.0.0.1:80>
ServerAdmin your@email.com
DocumentRoot /doc/root/for/first/domain/
ServerName www.firstdomain.com
ServerAlias www.firstdomain.com
ErrorLog logs/firstdomain_error_log
CustomLog logs/firstdomain_access_log common
</VirtualHost>

<VirtualHost 127.0.0.1:80>
ServerAdmin your@email.com
DocumentRoot /doc/root/for/second/domain/
ServerName www.seconddomain.com
ServerAlias www.seconddomain.com
ErrorLog logs/seconddomain_error_log
CustomLog logs/seconddomain_access_log common
</VirtualHost>

Replace 127.0.0.1 with the appropriate IP address, firstdomain and seconddomain as per the requirement.

Restart apache.

I tried this with apache 2.0.59 and it works fine.