MAMP just ONE virtual host not working

Question

I wanted to start a (my first) wordpress project on my mac. I run apache with MAMP, and wanted to make another (I allready have a few) virtual host for this particular project. I added the host to my httpd.conf and etc/hosts file as i've done many times before. When I browse to the url i've chosen I just end up in the directory that i've specified as root folder in my MAMP settings. Apache seems to ignore the changes made in the httpd.conf file, but if I remove (rename) the httpd.conf file (to _httpd.conf) it apache doesn't start. so it looks like changes to this file are ignored, BUT if I put something wrong in the file apache doesn't start either... this is what I put in the httpd.conf file to add a virtual host:

<VirtualHost *>
  DocumentRoot "/Users/username/Sites/site_dir/"
  ServerName local.sitename.com
  <Directory "/Users/username/Sites/site_dir/">
    Order allow,deny
    Allow from all
  </Directory>
</VirtualHost>

can this have anything to do with WP?

greets, R.

Answer 1

On Windows:

Try putting it in the conf/extras/httpd-vhosts.conf instead and try where port 80 is whatever port you have apache running on (:80 by default on windows)

and try not to use .org .com or any ending common on the web in your server name/alias use if you are developing the project on your localhost use something like sitename.local instead.

On Mac: Not sure how it would work

On Ubuntu 11.04: I just:

1. Set up a different vhost file for each site inside of /etc/apache2/sites-available
2. Then enable the site via a2ensite or just make a copy to the file using cp to the sites-enabled folder (all this is done via the ssh or a terminal on mac)
3. I then reload and restart apache and wallah!

I'm having a similar problem on one of my ubuntu servers. I'm doing something that I've done several times but all of a sudden it doesn't work. Go figure, lol! Typo? Who knows, definitely scour the web, an answer is sure to surface.