Running multiple domains on same server - apache

Question

I have a Ubuntu server running Apache and have 3 sites under /var/www/website/abc, /var/www/website/xyz and /var/www/website/lmn. I have 3 domains (www.abc.com, www.xyz.com, www.lmn.com) mapped to same machine (mapped same ip to 3 different domains on godaddy).
So I googled around and found this link - virtual host setup and made abc.com.conf in /etc/apache2/sites-available/ and correspondingly for other sites. Enabled the sites and then restarted apache but same site(/var/www/website/abc) appears on all 3 domains. I rechecked the paths but they seem to be correct. I can't figure out what is wrong. How can I route them to their corresponding sites?

Answer 1

It would be helpful in the future if you share your code (in this case the apache config files) to figure out what's wrong. In any case, this is roughly how the files can look (they don't have to look like this, there are other ways it can be configured).
First check /etc/apache2/apache2.conf and make sure you see the following code:
IncludeOptional sites-enabled/*.conf
The apache2.conf file is the primary configuration file. That line above includes all of the configuration files in the site-enabled folder. If you use a Red Hat derived OS you'll notice that the configuration file structure is different (Debian derivatives like Ubuntu like to split everything up into tons of configuration files, Red Hat derivatives keep it together)
Make sure that each of the files in the sites-enabled folder includes lines that look like this.
For abc.com.conf:
<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerName www.abc.com
DocumentRoot /var/www/website/abc
</VirtualHost>
If you also want "abc.com" to point to this virtual host enter "ServerAlias abc.com" underneath the ServerName line. What you're doing here is creating a VirtualHost block for any ip address (*) on port 80 (:80). You could replace the * in the opening VirtualHost line with your external ip address if you want to make sure that the VirtualHost is only matched to a particular ip (this is only potentially needed if there are multiple external ips pointing to your webserver). The ServerName line tells apache to match this VirtualHost whenever the Host HTTP header is www.abc.com. ServerAlias can be used to specify additional Hosts to match. Remember that www.abc.com and abc.com are treated as different Hosts. The DocumentRoot line sets the directory from which files are served.
Similarly for xyz.com.conf:
<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerName www.xyz.com
DocumentRoot /var/www/website/xyz
</VirtualHost>
If you also want "xyz.com" to point to this virtual host enter "ServerAlias xyz.com" underneath the ServerName line.
And finally for lmn.com.conf:
<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerName www.lmn.com
DocumentRoot /var/www/website/lmn
</VirtualHost>
If you also want "lmn.com" to point to this virtual host enter "ServerAlias lmn.com" underneath the ServerName line.