creating a virtual host - laravel

Question

I want to create a virtual host for my application i got some tutorials of how to setup a virtual host but still i am having issues with it, first i create a new file in the /etc/apache2/sites-avalable/popinbay.dev This is the popinbay.dev file please note that i am using ubuntu 14.04
<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerAdmin udemesamuel256#gmail.com
ServerName popibay.dev
DocumentRoot /var/www/laravel4
</VirtualHost>
then i edited the /etc/hosts and added this line
127.0.0.1 popibay.dev
then i did a sudo service apache2 reload based on this tutorial virtual host in ubuntu not work
But the problem is it still goes to the default localhost page instaed of the laravel4 page.

Answer 1

You are using a "Name-based Virtual Hosts".
From Apache docs on Using Name-based Virtual Hosts:
To use name-based virtual hosting, you must designate the IP address (and possibly port) on the server that will be accepting requests for the hosts. This is configured using the NameVirtualHost directive. In the normal case where any and all IP addresses on the server should be used, you can use * as the argument to NameVirtualHost.
Try add NameVirtualHost *:80 to the top of your configuration, then restart your apache. E.g.
NameVirtualHost *:80
<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerAdmin udemesamuel256#gmail.com
ServerName popibay.dev
DocumentRoot /var/www/laravel4
</VirtualHost>
Note that you might need to change your DocumentRoot to /var/www/laravel4/public. That's where your http server should point to by default in Laravel projects.

Answer 2

You added virtual host file in sites-available folder but didn't Enabled it.
Use
sudo a2ensite virtuatl_host.conf
In your case,
sudo a2ensite popibay.dev.conf
And then,
sudo service apache2 reload