setting a default apache virtual host - apache

Question

Is there any better way of setting the default apache virtual host other than it just picking the first config it finds?
I have a server with many domains, of which only some are configured with httpd but the default virtual host severed up is for example is aaa.com where as really I would like it to default to mmm.com instead?
Something like parking domains without going through the hassle of setting up a config for each one - then I can serve a "content this domain has not been created yet" page?
Cheers

Answer 1

You can create a default virtual host and name it something like 000-default so that it loads first and is used unless another vhost matching the requested domain is found. Here's the bare-bones 000-default:
<VirtualHost *:80>
DocumentRoot /var/www
<Directory /var/www >
AllowOverride All
Order allow,deny
Allow from all
</Directory>
</VirtualHost>
Then you can setup a PHP file under /var/www to create a domain parking page (this is a very simplified example):
<?php
printf('The domain <b>%s</b> is being parked',
htmlentities($_SERVER['HTTP_HOST']));
?>

Answer 2

The first sites-available conf file is default (alphabetically). There should be a 000-default.conf file already, if not create it.
Edit this one to your liking and then make sure it's enabled a2ensite 000-default.conf. And apache2 is reloaded sudo service apache2 reload.
Then any request that isn't caught by your other vhosts will come here.

Answer 3

Use ServerAlias in a name-based VirtualHost, you will only have to add one line per each new domain.