Setting Up Apache Virtual Hosts on MAMP - Digital Masters Magazine

In order to comfortably edit several dynamic websites in Dreamweaver at the same time you do not need several teting servers. Instead, you can set up virtual hosts on your existing Apache installation. This will work with any popular distribution including MAMP, WAMP and XAMP. Today we will show you how to set up virtual hosts on MAMP.

1. Install MAMP

First, go to the official MAMP website and download your free copy of MAMP. Unzip the packgage, double-click the installer and follow the on-screen instructions.

MAMP installation — Installing MAMP and MAMP Pro

At this point, you should have a working installation of Apache with MySQL.
In order to manage your servers, locate a folder named MAMP in your Applications folder and double-click MAMP.app.

In order to complete the other steps you should stop your servers now.

2. Edit /etc/hosts on your Mac

Open the Terminal and type

sudo pico /etc/hosts

When prompted, enter the password of your administrator account.

Edit the file in a way that you see a result like this:

## # 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 localhost2 localhost3 255.255.255.255 broadcasthost ::1 localhost fe80::1%lo0 localhost

Instead of localhost, localhost2, localhost3 you could actually put in the name of a project.

editing /etc/hosts on MAc OS X — editing /etc/hosts on Mac OS X

When you are done editing the /etc/hosts file, press Control-O in order to output your changes to the file. When prompted to overwrite existing file, confirm with Return. The editor will overwrite the existing /etc/hosts file. Press Control-X to exit pico.

3. Edit the the httpd.conf file

Open the file httpd.conf located in /Applications/MAMP/conf/apache in a text editor of your choice (either TextEdit in plain text mode, TextWrangler or BBEdit will do).

Path to your Apache files in MAMP on OS X

Open the file httpd.conf located in /Applications/MAMP/conf/apache in a text editor of your choice (either TextEdit or BBEdit will do).

Navigate to the end of that file and enter this:

#NameVirtualHost *:8888 Include /Applications/MAMP/conf/apache/vhosts.conf

This will ensure that Apache reads the contents of the vhosts.conf file you are going to create.

3. Create your vhosts.conf file

Create a new text file and save it in the Include path you defined in the previous step. Enter in it this code:

# Virtual Hosts # # VirtualHost example: # Almost any Apache directive may go into a VirtualHost container. # The first VirtualHost section is used for all requests that do not # match a ServerName or ServerAlias in any block. # # ServerAdmin webmaster@dummy-host.example.com # DocumentRoot "/www/docs/dummy-host.example.com" # ServerName dummy-host.example.com # ServerAlias www.dummy-host.example.com # ErrorLog "/private/var/log/apache2/dummy-host.example.com-error_log" # CustomLog "/private/var/log/apache2/dummy-host.example.com-access_log common" # # ServerAdmin webmaster@dummy-host2.example.com # DocumentRoot "/www/docs/dummy-host2.example.com" # ServerName dummy-host2.example.com # ErrorLog "/private/var/log/apache2/dummy-host2.example.com-error_log" # CustomLog "/private/var/log/apache2/dummy-host2.example.com-access_log common"


ServerName localhost

DocumentRoot /Applications/MAMP/htdocs/
Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews

AllowOverride All

Order allow,deny

Allow from all
ServerName localhost2

DocumentRoot /Applications/MAMP/htdocs2/
Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews

AllowOverride All

Order allow,deny

Allow from all
ServerName localhost3

DocumentRoot /Applications/MAMP/htdocs3/

Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews AllowOverride All Order allow,deny allow from all

Save the file.