Topic: Mapping domain names on localhost

[Rahul]

I am developing a site. For testing it locally, I installed Apache.
Now, I want to map my domain (say www.example.com) to the example folder in htdocs, so that my server-relative links work fine, and I dont have to modify them when I upload the files to the server.

Please tell me, how can I do that???

[James Blond]

a) you can edit your host file in C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc
b) easier you can put your links relativ! without hostname. This is the most way web pages are programmed.

[Rahul]

There ae site sub-domains for which I obviously will have to use the hostname & therefore perform a host mapping on the local host.

I have made an entry in the host file for my top-level domain. That's fine.
But, now I want to map the sub-domains to sub-directories of the root localhost folder (like we do for A or CNAME records).

Can I do that, becuase with this appraoch I can test my site completely locally, and then upload it without any changes to the link destinations?

[James Blond]

You can also put the sub.domain into the host file and add name based vhosts to your httod.conf
Attention you also have to put your main (toplevel) domain into a vhost!

See the docs for more details
http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.2/vhosts/name-based.html

If you still have a question, you are welcome to ask again.

[Rahul]

Its still not working for me.
So, let me be very specific. What I am trying to achieve is using all kind of links in my web-pages & stll be able to test my site completely locally.

Suppose my top-level domain is example.com. I also have a sub-domain ex.example.com.

Now, in my hosts file in the etc directory, I have mapped both the domain & the sub-domain to 127.0.0.1.

So, both of them resolve to my directory root, htdocs.
I want htdcos to remain the root-directory for my domain, & I want to resolve ex.example.com to htdocs/ex.
Obviously, the server-relative links in pages in the ex directory should continue to resolve with respect to the directory root, i.e. htdocs.

So, is there any way to achieve this. Please be very specific about the configuration entries I have to make, & in which files to make them (i.e. http, or .htaccess etc. or whichever)...

[James Blond]

Here is an working example. Keep the * if you change it for your needs

[Rahul]

Thank you very much. I was missing the <Directory> directive.

Its working fine, but for just one thing I mentioned before.

The server-relative links in pages in the ex directory (e.g. /Images) should continue to resolve with respect to the directory root, i.e. htdocs.

Can I achieve it too???

[Rahul]

My sub-domains are resolving correctly now using the VirtualHost directives.

There's one additional thing I want to accopolish now. My sub-domain ex.example.com resolves to htdocs/ex.

But using this configuration, server-relative links (relative to my top-level Directory Root i.e. /htdocs) in ex directory files (e.g. /Images/sample.jpg) do not resolve correctly, obvioulsy.

So, I thought why not rewrite ex.example.com to example.com/ex. I tried to use mod_rewrite directive for it, but my error logs showed me that I am coding the directive incorrectly.

So, can you provide me sample solutions for the following:
1) Rewrite ex.example.com to example.com/ex
2) Rewrite www.ex.example.com again to example.com/ex
3) Finally. rewrite any sub-domain to its corresponding directories, i.e.
sub-domain.example.com to example.com/sub-domain; and
www.sub-domain.example.com again to example.com/sub-domain.

And by the way, thanks in advance.

[tdonovan]

mod_rewrite is not necessary for this.

You could put Alias commands inside the <VirtualHost> blocks for each htdocs-based directory.

For example, on Windows:

[Rahul]

Yes, Alias can also be used for the puspose. Thanx!!!

But, I am still not getting the expression for mod_rewrite correct. Can you provide the sample solutions???