Ubuntu apache virtual host site doesn't work in the browser

Question

I have a Laravel site that I've setup in /var/www/html/ . I have also setup a vhost for this site as I want to have a custom url( example.dev ) rather than localhost .

This is how I setup my vhost:

<VirtualHost *:80>

    ServerName example.dev
    ServerAlias http://example.dev
    DocumentRoot /var/www/html/example/public/

        <Directory /var/www/html/example/>
            Options Indexes FollowSymLinks
            AllowOverride All
            Require all granted
        </Directory>

        ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/error.log
        CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/access.log combined

</VirtualHost>

After doing this I disable the default .conf by running sudo a2dissite 000-default.conf and then I enable the .conf I created( sudo a2ensite example.dev.conf ). After all this I restarted apache and reloaded the configurations.

From there on I went to add my server name to my host file like this:

127.0.0.1       localhost       example.dev
127.0.1.1       tangaye

# The following lines are desirable for IPv6 capable hosts
::1     ip6-localhost ip6-loopback
fe00::0 ip6-localnet
ff00::0 ip6-mcastprefix
ff02::1 ip6-allnodes
ff02::2 ip6-allrouters

Now when I try to access my site in the browser my typing example.dev I get:

This site cannot be reached. example.dev refuse to connect.

But when I do localhost my site is launch. Why is this happening? Interestingly I have realized that when I curl -L example.dev I get the full expected outcome of my site in the terminal. Why is me site being access in the terminal rather than the browser? Will appreciate any help. Thanks!

Answer 1

Firstly thanks to @Bekir for the heads up . I realized google has added .dev as one of their Top Level Domiains(tld). Which means if one tries to use it locally one local machine should be able to:

• Serve HTTPs
• Have self-signed certificates in place to handle that
• Have that self-signed certificate added to your local trust store (you can't dismiss self-signed certificates with HSTS, they need to be 'trusted' by your computer)

As mentioned in the post there are two options: .localhost or .test . Both of these resolves to 127.0.0.1 .

I tried both and it worked perfectly for me. I also try .com but it only work on opera and not on chrome .

On chrome I realize forces https when I'm using example.com or example.dev , but everthing works fine across browsers when I switch to example.test or example.localhost