If I have 2 web domains that have the same ip address, how should I test in browser for each web domain if by just typing the ip address?

I am currently using Ubuntu 20.04 and a newbie, I have made 2 web domains: site1.com and site2.com, both of them having the same ip address, but when I type the ip address on the browser, only site1.com appears. If I want to get site2.com to appear using the same ip address, how should I do that?

Solution 1:

One of the ways around this is to edit the /etc/hosts file on your local machine to point some internal network addresses to the same IP address.

For example, you can edit your /etc/hosts file to include these lines:

127.0.0.1       site1.local
127.0.0.1       site2.local

_{Note: Be sure to replace 127.0.0.1 with the actual IP address. For the names, you can put almost anything, but do yourself a favour and do not use the common TLDs like .com or .net. It can create confusion later.}

With the hosts file updated, you can now edit your Apache config files for the site. For example, site1.com might look like this:

<VirtualHost *:80>
        ServerAdmin [email protected]
        DocumentRoot /var/www/site1.com

        ServerName site1.com
        DirectoryIndex index.php index.html

        ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/site1-error.log
        CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/site1-access.log combined
</VirtualHost>

Add a ServerAlias record that has the domain name you created in /etc/hosts. Generally, I write this to the line immediately after ServerName so that it looks something like:

ServerName site1.com
ServerAlias site1.com site1.local
DirectoryIndex index.php index.html

Save the file, then restart (or reload) Apache:

sudo service apache2 restart

Then you can go to your browser and access the sites using site1.local and site2.local (or whatever you assigned).