Instead of using the local domain localhost for your local development environment, you may create a custom domain name, named anything else and use it instead.
In this example, we will create local domain and create a vhost that will point it to a specific working directory. I’ll assume you already have XAMPP for Linux installed.
1. Open /etc/hosts file using your favorite editor
[wm@serv0-wal ~] sudo vim /etc/hosts
2. Add the custom domain you would like to the end of the lines as shown in the image below. In my case, I have created two domains, rawle.local and mwab.ini
When you access the domain, it will give you the same page that accessing localhost does. We can point the domain to a specific document root by creating a vhost for it.
3. In XAMPP for Linux, access /opt/lampp/etc/extra. This is the location of configuration files for Apache web server that comes with XAMPP
[wm@serv0-wal ~]$ cd /opt/lampp/etc/extra/
4. Create a config file for your vhost
[wm@serv0-wal extra]$ touch rawle.local.conf
5. Copy the code below in the config file
<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerAdmin [email protected]
DocumentRoot “/opt/lampp/htdocs/gportal-2.0”
ServerName rawle.local
ServerAlias www.rawle.local
ErrorLog “logs/rawle.local.error_log”
CustomLog “logs/rawle.local.access_log” common
</VirtualHost>
Replace rawle.local with your custom domain.
6. Start/Restart XAMPP
[wm@serv0-wal extra]$ sudo /opt/lampp/lampp restart
Restarting XAMPP for Linux 7.3.0-0…
XAMPP: Stopping Apache…not running.
XAMPP: Stopping MySQL…not running.
XAMPP: Stopping ProFTPD…not running.
XAMPP: Starting Apache…ok.
XAMPP: Starting MySQL…ok.
XAMPP: Starting ProFTPD…ok.
[wm@serv0-wal extra]$
7. Access your local website using your new local domain.
We’ll then ,in our next article, see how to secure the local environment with an SSL certificate. Not just a self signed one that will give warnings, but one that will show https with a green padlock, just as through it came from a real Certificate Authority.