After spending 1 hour trying to figure out how to configure virtual hosts on my local projects installations in Windows 8.1 .. I finally got it working ; so I decided to write a quick tutorial about it 🙂
What we will create is a virtual host under the name; “myproject”. Change this to reflect your project alias name.
Edit hosts file
Go to
C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc
Open “hosts” file using Notepad or so with admin privileges (You need to open notepad as admin: “run as admin”, this way you can save the changes inside the hosts file) and add the following to its end;
127.0.0.1 myproject
Save it and close.
Allow Virtual Hosts in httpd.conf
I’m using wampserver so to edit this apache configuration file, i left click on wamp tray icon and Apache -> httpd.conf. This opens the file in notepad.
Search for
# Virtual hosts
# Include conf/extra/httpd-vhosts.conf
and comment out
Include conf/extra/httpd-vhosts.conf
This enables virtual hosts on Apache.
Add and configure virtual hosts individual projects
Now the only thing left to do is to add our projects to the httpd-vhosts.conf file located, depending on your setup in;
Apache2.4.4\conf\extra
In this file, some tutorials recommand adding localhost to the list of virtual hosts, like so;
<VirtualHost *:80>
DocumentRoot "d:/www"
ServerName localhost
ServerAlias localhost
<Directory "d:/www">
AllowOverride All
Require local
</Directory>
</VirtualHost>
Then at the bottom of it, you add your project
<VirtualHost *:80>
DocumentRoot "d:/projects/myproject"
ServerName zaintest
<Directory "d:/projects/myproject">
AllowOverride All
Require local
</Directory>
</VirtualHost>
After you have done all the steps, restart wampserver for the configuration to be set.
That’s it you have a running virtual host 🙂
Nice tutorial. I will try it and give you update if it works. Thanks
it works! 🙂
So cool. I’ve done this before but needed a refresher. Plain simple and to the point. Awesome!
Thanks man, you saved my ass
thanks alot buddy. 🙂
I can’t edit file “hosts”, Win10 tolds me, that I haven’t got authorization to edit and save something in ../drivers/etc/, but I am logged in Admin account. So, what can I do now? Another steps works fine. Thank you !
You need to open notepad (or other program) as admin (run as admin), this way you can save the changes inside the hosts file.