Step 1:  Create Website Folder

User websites appear in the Users/Sites/ directory.  Let’s create a directory within Sites named “mynewsite”:

cd ~/Sites/
mkdir mynewsite

As you’ll see in a moment, you can add this directory anywhere you’d like, but for the sake of this post we’ll add it in the standard Sites directory.

Step 2:  Edit httpd-vhosts.conf File

The next step is adding a new record to Apache’s httpd-vhosts.conf file.  My httpd-vhosts.conf file is located within the following directory:  private/etc/apache2/extra/.  This configuration file holds your website virtual host location details.  Let’s add mynewsite to the configuration:

<VirtualHost *:80>
    DocumentRoot "/Users/myUserName/Sites/mynewsite"
    ServerName mynewsite.local
</VirtualHost>

The two important configurations are DocumentRoot and ServerName.  DocumentRoot points to the directory we created in step 1.  ServerName refers to the address we want to type into the browser to get to this new site.  I generally create all my hosts with the “.local” domain.

You can also place more specific configurations within this new virtual host, including ProxyPass, directory settings, error documents, redirects, and other settings you sometimes see in .htaccess files:

<VirtualHost *:80>
	DocumentRoot "/Users/myUserName/Sites/mynewsite"
	ServerName mynewsite.local
	<directory "/Users/davidwalsh83/Sites/mynewsite/trunk/">
		Options Indexes FollowSymLinks
		AllowOverride All
		Order allow,deny
		Allow from all
	</directory>
	ProxyPass /web-service http://someotherwebsite.com/api/
	ProxyPassReverse /web-service http://someotherwebsite.com/api/
</VirtualHost>

You can learn more about the possible settings here:  http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.2/vhosts/

Step 3:  Edit hosts File

The hosts file contains a list of host names and IP address to which they match.  We’ll add another record to this file which points the new website’s ServerName setting from above (mynewsite.local) to the localhost IP address:

##
# 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
255.255.255.255	broadcasthost
::1             localhost 
fe80::1%lo0	localhost
127.0.0.1	mynewsite.local

Now mynewsite.local host name is pointing toward your machine.  Coupled with the httpd-vhosts.conf file’s new settings, the address will find your mynewsites directory!

Step 4:  Apache Restart

The last step in the process is restarting your Apache install:

apache restart

The other method of quickly restarting Apache is by opening System Settings >> Sharing and unchecking and then checking “Web Sharing”.  That’s all!  Now you can navigate to http://mynewsite.local and see your web files!

Quick Side Note

Your IT people would probably prefer you not use your machine’s Apache and instead use a virtual machine for your web development.  I’ve personally felt the pain of using my MacBook Pro instead of a virtual machine but that was due to MySQL and not Apache.  This tutorial is meant to show you how to quickly get a new site up and running on your local machine. The same process can be used to create a new virtual host on other machines but the file locations will simply be different.

Create a Virtual Host in OSX is a post from: David Walsh :: Legendary scribbles about JavaScript, HTML5, AJAX, PHP, CSS, and ∞.

# Proxy requests to /data to persevere
ProxyPass /service http://localhost:8080/Status
ProxyPassReverse /service/ http://localhost:8080/Status
RewriteRule ^/service$ http://localhost:8080/Status$1 [P,L]

Now any reference to the directory “/Status” is proxied to the other port to receive the data!  Apache proxying is a huge boost to your web application if you can trust the other domain/port.

Simple Apache Proxying is a post from: David Walsh :: Legendary scribbles about JavaScript, HTML5, AJAX, PHP, CSS, and ∞.

To get things working, you should:

1. Log into your Media Temple (dv) control panel.
2. Navigate to the domain and click the “Crontab” icon.
3. Click “Schedule a Task”
4. Configure the time and frequency of the CRON to any way you’d like.
5. Set the “command” value to:

   wget http://12.23.56.78/wp-cron.php

6. Replace the fake IP in the command above with the IP address of your website.

That’s all! Hitting the wp-cron.php file with the CRON will ensure you database backups and other scheduled tasks will run at proper intervals!

Fix WordPress CRONs on Media Temple (dv) Servers is a post from: David Walsh :: Legendary scribbles about JavaScript, HTML5, AJAX, PHP, CSS, and ∞.

# Mod Rewrite
Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]

The fix to this problem was to add the following directive before my mod_rewrite directives:

#Fix Rewrite
Options -Multiviews

Tada! The URLs began working and the website’s SEO has taken off!

Fixing mod_rewrite and .htaccess on GoDaddy Hosting is a post from: David Walsh :: Legendary scribbles about JavaScript, HTML5, AJAX, PHP, CSS, and ∞.

The Shell Script

furl http://davidwalsh.name

Simple and quick — just like every shell directive.

The Sample Response

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: Thu, 25 Jun 2009 01:50:50 GMT
Server: Apache/2.2.3 (CentOS)
X-Powered-By: PHP/5.2.6
X-Pingback: http://davidwalsh.name/xmlrpc.php
Cache-Control: max-age=1, private, must-revalidate
Expires: Thu, 25 Jun 2009 01:50:51 GMT
Vary: Accept-Encoding
Connection: close
Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8

Don’t have FURL? Install it by scripting this:

sudo port install furl

How is this useful? I would use this to periodically (cron) check my website to make sure it was up. What would you use this for?

Use FURL to Retrieve Website Headers is a post from: David Walsh :: Legendary scribbles about JavaScript, HTML5, AJAX, PHP, CSS, and ∞.

apache.exe: Syntax error on line 477 of E:/xampplite/apache/conf/httpd.conf: 
Syntax error on line 7 of E:/xampplite/apache/conf/extra/httpd-xampp.conf: 
Cannot load E:/xampplite/apache/bin/php5apache2_2.dll into server: The specified module
could not be found.

After 20 minutes of frustration, I finally found the golden solution.  I needed to download and place msvcr71.dll in my \xampplite\apache\bin folder.  Apparently it’s a Microsoft runtime file that Vista doesn’t have. Disaster averted!

XAMPP Lite, Windows Vista, and php5apache2_2.dll is a post from: David Walsh :: Legendary scribbles about JavaScript, HTML5, AJAX, PHP, CSS, and ∞.

The .htaccess Code

#format
php_value setting_name setting_value

#example
php_value  upload_max_filesize  10M

Of course you could simply place these in the .htaccess file, but .htaccess is a viable alternative if your host doesn’t allow you to touch the php.ini file.

Set php.ini Values Using .htaccess is a post from: David Walsh :: Legendary scribbles about JavaScript, HTML5, AJAX, PHP, CSS, and ∞.

file_uploads = On
upload_max_filesize = 10M //needs to be in {x}M format

Note that not all hosting providers allow customers to increase the file upload limit. Take that into consideration when purchasing your customer’s web hosting.

Increase PHP’s File Upload Limit Using php.ini is a post from: David Walsh :: Legendary scribbles about JavaScript, HTML5, AJAX, PHP, CSS, and ∞.

• Keeping a known hacker/bot from accessing your website
• Allowing only your IP address to view your website (while it’s in development, for example)
• Allowing only trusted persons into your website (if your users’ IP’s stay the same, that’s more secure than user/pass)
• Disallowing persons from a specified country (or any known location) from your website
• Banning persons from your website

The Code

<limit GET POST PUT>
order deny,allow
deny from 202.57.377.22
deny from 8.77.88.33
allow from all
</limit>

The above code bans the two IP addresses from accessing the website.

Chances are you wont do this often. I do, however, believe that you should use this for your development server. Allowing only LAN users to access your development server prevents a search engine or hacker from getting to your website:

<limit GET POST PUT>
order deny,allow
deny from all
allow from 192.168.0.0/24
</limit>

Do you have any other reasons to ban IP addresses? Have any code to share? Please do!

Advanced .htaccess Security – Allow or Block Specific IPs From Your Website is a post from: David Walsh :: Legendary scribbles about JavaScript, HTML5, AJAX, PHP, CSS, and ∞.

The Code

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} digg.com [NC]
RewriteRule .* - [F]

Say good-bye to Digg Death with this small, easy-to-place snippet of code!

Advanced .htaccess Security – Block Unwanted Referrers is a post from: David Walsh :: Legendary scribbles about JavaScript, HTML5, AJAX, PHP, CSS, and ∞.