Trouble creating virtual host

Report · Dec 22, 2008

Hello,

I just purchased David Powers' books, Essential Guide to DW CS3 and PHP Object-Oriented Solutions and am anxiously awaiting their arrival. In the meantime, I installed xampp's version of Apache, PHP, MySQL, etc. That install went fine and after some playing around I was able to view the localhost files that came with it. Now I am on to get a virtual host setup so that I can do my testing off-line. I followed the tutorial on David's site, but my files do not load in the browser (Firefox) window. If I type http://TSDevelopment or http://TSDevelopment/Home.php the browser forwards me to http://tsdevelopment/xampp and I see the same screen as if I went to http://localhost, namely xampp's welcome screen.

I have gone over the David's tutorial twice and can't see that I am missing anything, but I must have (?).

I am running on an XP Professional system.

Any help will be greatly appreciated.

Cheers and Merry Christmas,
Mike

Report · Dec 22, 2008

You don't *really* need virtual hosts to test many pages. Virtual hosts are
necessary, though, if you are using root relative links.

So - when you browse to http://localhost, you see the XAMPP screen? That's
good.

What have you done so far to get your virtual hosts setup?

--
Murray --- ICQ 71997575
Adobe Community Expert
(If you *MUST* email me, don't LAUGH when you do so!)
==================
http://www.projectseven.com/go - DW FAQs, Tutorials & Resources
http://www.dwfaq.com - DW FAQs, Tutorials & Resources
==================

"Mike-H" <webforumsuser@macromedia.com> wrote in message
news:gioo45$cm5$1@forums.macromedia.com...
> Hello,
>
> I just purchased David Powers' books, Essential Guide to DW CS3 and PHP
> Object-Oriented Solutions and am anxiously awaiting their arrival. In the
> meantime, I installed xampp's version of Apache, PHP, MySQL, etc. That
> install
> went fine and after some playing around I was able to view the localhost
> files
> that came with it. Now I am on to get a virtual host setup so that I can
> do my
> testing off-line. I followed the tutorial on David's site, but my files do
> not
> load in the browser (Firefox) window. If I type http://TSDevelopment or
> http://TSDevelopment/Home.php the browser forwards me to
> http://tsdevelopment/xampp and I see the same screen as if I went to
> http://localhost, namely xampp's welcome screen.
>
> I have gone over the David's tutorial twice and can't see that I am
> missing
> anything, but I must have (?).
>
> I am running on an XP Professional system.
>
> Any help will be greatly appreciated.
>
> Cheers and Merry Christmas,
> Mike
>

Report · Dec 23, 2008

Hi Murray,
Thanks for the reply. I know I probably don't need virtual hosts, but I really do want to make sure the paths work out. I would like that extra mental assurance that I have done everything I can to make the site as standalone as possible before uploading to a live site.

I am on a windows XP Pro machine. My virtual hosts will reside on my L: drive, which is a networked drive. I tried to follow David's tutorial (at http://www.foundationphp.com/tutorials/apache22_vhosts.php) on setting up the virtual hosts. Here is what I did:
1. Edited c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts and added the following line:
127.0.0.1 TSDev
2. Edited c:\xampp\apache\conf\httpd.conf and made sure that this line is NOT commented out:
Include conf/extra/httpd-xampp.conf
This is in the #Supplemental configuration section, under #XAMPP specific settings. This line was not commented out to begin with, so I did not change this file.
3. Edited c:\xampp\apache\conf\extra\httpd-vhosts.conf
A:) Added this section:
<Directory L:/WebDev>
Order Deny,Allow
Allow from all
</Directory>
B:) Added this section at the bottom:
<VirtualHost *:80>
DocumentRoot l:/WebDev/TSDev
ServerName TSDev
</VirtualHost>

I saved everything and rebooted. Then I got the results listed in my previous post.

I just looked at the Services snap-in, it shows that Apache2.2 is running, mysql is running and also another service called IIS Admin is running, I don't know if that would cause a conflict or not.

Thanks again for your help.
Mike

Report · Dec 23, 2008

Mike-H wrote:
> I just looked at the Services snap-in, it shows that Apache2.2 is running,
> mysql is running and also another service called IIS Admin is running, I don't
> know if that would cause a conflict or not.

If they're both running on Port 80, that will definitely cause a conflict.

--
David Powers, Adobe Community Expert
Author, "The Essential Guide to Dreamweaver CS4",
"PHP Solutions" & "PHP Object-Oriented Solutions"
http://foundationphp.com/

Report · Dec 23, 2008

David,

Thanks for your help. Is it better to stop IIS or change the port for Apache? If I change the port for Apache, what else do I need to change? No sites have been set up in IIS on this computer, so I don't know how IIS could have hijacked those calls and I suspect that they were handled by Apache.

Appreciate your help.

Cheers,
Mike

Report · Dec 23, 2008

Just for fun, I decided to stop IIS. This did not solve the problem. There does not appear (to me at least) to be a conflict. In my browser, if I type in the address of http://TSDev/Home.php I get a 404 - Object not found. If I type http:// TSDev or http://TSDev/ I am forwarded to http://tsdev/xampp/ . Any ideas?

Thanks,
Mike

Report · Dec 23, 2008

Mike-H wrote:
> In my browser, if I type in the
> address of http://TSDev/Home.php I get a 404 - Object not found. If I type
> http:// TSDev or http://TSDev/ I am forwarded to http://tsdev/xampp/ . Any
> ideas?

I have never set up virtual hosts in XAMPP, but it should be the same as
with a standard Apache installation. Make sure you still have a
definition in your virtual hosts file for localhost.

--
David Powers, Adobe Community Expert
Author, "The Essential Guide to Dreamweaver CS4",
"PHP Solutions" & "PHP Object-Oriented Solutions"
http://foundationphp.com/

Report · Dec 27, 2008

Hello again,

Hope everyone had a merry Christ-mas.

My books came (a day early - thank you, Amazon and UPS). I opened up to chapter 3 of David's Essential Guide. Since he had pretty thorough instructions, I decided to abandon the all-in-one approach to loading Apache,PHP and MySQL, so I uninstalled xampp and installed Apache and PHP individually. This went fine (I haven't attempted MySQL yet, that will be forthcoming), and I was able to get virtual hosts to work.

Sort of.

I discovered that as long as my virtual host directory is on my local c: drive the virtual host works great. If I put the same file in a network drive and change httpd-vhosts.conf to point to the network drive, then Apache won't load, either when I boot my computer, or if I manually stop and restart it. Has anyone had any experience with this? I am running XP Pro on my laptop (the Apache host). The network drives are on a server (running MS Server 2008, I think) in another part of the building. The IIS service has been stopped to avoid conflicts.

Thanks again in advance.

Mike