IP-based virtual hosts use the IP address of the connection to determine the correct virtual host to serve. Therefore you need to have a separate IP address for each host.

With name-based virtual hosting, the server relies on the client to report the hostname as part of the HTTP headers. Using this technique, many different hosts can share the same IP address.

Name-based virtual hosting is usually simpler, since you need only configure your DNS server to map each hostname to the correct IP address and then configure the Apache HTTP Server to recognize the different hostnames. Name-based virtual hosting also eases the demand for scarce IP addresses. Therefore you should use name-based virtual hosting unless you are using equipment that explicitly demands IP-based hosting. Historical reasons for IP-based virtual hosting based on client support are no longer applicable to a general-purpose web server.

Name-based virtual hosting builds off of the IP-based virtual host selection algorithm, meaning that searches for the proper server name occur only between virtual hosts that have the best IP-based address.

It is important to recognize that the first step in name-based virtual host resolution is IP-based resolution. Name-based virtual host resolution only chooses the most appropriate name-based virtual host after narrowing down the candidates to the best IP-based match. Using a wildcard (*) for the IP address in all of the VirtualHost directives makes this IP-based mapping irrelevant.

When a request arrives, the server will find the best (most specific) matching VirtualHost argument based on the IP address and port used by the request. If there is more than one virtual host containing this best-match address and port combination, Apache will further compare the ServerName and ServerAlias directives to the server name present in the request.

The first step is to create a VirtualHost block for each different host that you would like to serve. Inside each VirtualHost block, you will need at minimum a ServerName directive to designate which host is served and a DocumentRoot directive to show where in the filesystem the content for that host lives.

For example, suppose that you are serving the domain www.example.com and you wish to add the virtual host other.example.com, which points at the same IP address. Then you simply add the following to httpd.conf:

You can alternatively specify an explicit IP address in place of the * in VirtualHost directives. For example, you might want to do this in order to run some name-based virtual hosts on one IP address, and either IP-based, or another set of name-based virtual hosts on another address.

Many servers want to be accessible by more than one name. This is possible with the ServerAlias directive, placed inside the VirtualHost section. For example in the first VirtualHost block above, the ServerAlias directive indicates that the listed names are other names which people can use to see that same web site:

then requests for all hosts in the example.com domain will be served by the www.example.com virtual host. The wildcard characters * and ? can be used to match names. Of course, you can't just make up names and place them in ServerName or ServerAlias. You must first have your DNS server properly configured to map those names to an IP address associated with your server.

Finally, you can fine-tune the configuration of the virtual hosts by placing other directives inside the VirtualHost containers. Most directives can be placed in these containers and will then change the configuration only of the relevant virtual host. To find out if a particular directive is allowed, check the Context of the directive. Configuration directives set in the main server context (outside any VirtualHost container) will be used only if they are not overridden by the virtual host settings.