Can I use virtual hosts AND localhost on MAMP? - macos

Question

I've got my MAMP setup working with virtual hosts and it's been great. The one problem I have is that localhost doesn't work so long as virtual hosts is enabled. I haven't been able to find out if that's normal behavior or not. Can I make both localhost and virtual hosts work on MAMP?

Answer 1

Yes, this is possible. This will need to added to the vhosts, but it can't be added just like any other... it has to be configured so it's the default vhost. To accomplish this, you need to set up your apache config to allow vhosts, (i'm assuming you've already taken care of that).
Your Vhosts config needs a few things before you start listing Vhosts in order for localhost to work. first a NameVirtualHost directive, then a master vhost (your localhost), followed by your regular vhosts. Apache will attempt to match the provided host against all of your named vhosts, and when it fails, it will serve your default vhost (which is your first listed vhost) by default. In order to accomplish this, I recommend changing 3 files: etc/hosts, apache.conf and vhosts.conf.
In your hosts file, give your machine a name other than localhost on the first line where it sets 127.0.0.1 to localhost:
hosts
127.0.0.1 localhost puededev
then in your apache.conf change your ServerName directive to match the new hostname. This is usually set to 127.0.0.1 or localhost, and typically followed by a Directory directive block with some permissions settings
apache.conf
ServerName puededev
Now in your vhosts, you will set your NameVirtualHosts config, and your default virtual host, followed by your other vhosts:
vhosts.conf
NameVirtualHost puededev
Listen 80
Listen 8080
# list out any other ports you are using
<VirtualHost localhost:*>
ServerAdmin webmaster#example.com
ServerName localhost
DocumentRoot /home/usr/mamp/htdocs
<Directory /home/usr/mamphtdocs>
order deny,allow
Allow from 127.0.0.1
Allow from ::1
</Directory>
</VirtualHost>
It is also possible to use whatever configuration you use now, and create aliases to different application that will work off of virtual hosts. this is how phpmyadmin runs with MAMP, and you'll notice you can still use localhost/phpmyadmin as an accessible path, even though you are likely getting an forbidden/you do not have access error when you just use localhost/ at the moment.
Aliases will depend on whether your installation is set to manage aliases in external files, but you can always define an alias in the apache.conf. You would likely use this method if you want to do something like localhost/sampleapp instead of a vhost set to http://sampleapp/
Alias /sampleapp /path/to/sampleapp
<Directory /path/to/sampleapp>
Order allow,deny
Allow from all
</Directory>
now go to: http://localhost/sampleapp