Well this has been tested on Ubuntu 14.04 LTS, but it could work on your linux distro too.
Anyway, here is a quick tutorial for using Apache’s virtual hosts to organise sites to be developed locally.
Note: If you are working with a framework like CodeIgniter and need to modify URLs, you’ll need to activate mod_rewrite. See https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-set-up-mod_rewrite for more details. tldr;
sudo a2enmod rewrite
Create the folder. I’m using example.dev as the test site. Note: I’ve used .dev because I have a plugin that forces the browser to request sites that support https to change the url from, for example http://example.com to https://example.com This will then take you to the online web page instead of the local one.
sudo mkdir -p /var/www/example.dev/public_html
Allow current user privileges to that folder
sudo chown -R $USER:$USER /var/www/example.dev/public_html
Create a test page
nano /var/www/example.dev/public_html/index.html
and add for example,
<html>
<head>
<title>This is example.dev</title>
</head>
<body>
<h1>Success! We are running example.dev on virtual hosts!</h1>
</body>
</html>
Make a copy of your default virtual host file
sudo cp /etc/apache2/sites-available/000-default.conf /etc/apache2/sites-available/example.dev.conf
Edit the copy you just created
sudo nano /etc/apache2/sites-available/example.dev.conf
Change the following lines to point to example.dev
<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerAdmin admin@example.dev
ServerName example.dev
ServerAlias www.example.dev
DocumentRoot /var/www/example.dev/public_html
</VirtualHost>
Enable the virtual host file with the a2ensite tool
sudo a2ensite example.dev.conf
Restart apache
sudo service apache2 restart
Edit your local hosts file
sudo nano /etc/hosts
Add the line
127.0.0.1 example.dev
Test it. Open a browser and type
http://example.dev
Remember, this will now send you your local site example.dev instead of the actual example.dev online (if such a site exists).
You can delete or comment those local host entries after you’ve finished developing your site.
Update
I recently discovered ubuntu disables the functionality of the .htaccess file by default. If you intend to use it during local development, you will need to add this to your example.dev.conf file.
<Directory /var/www/example.dev/public_html >
# AllowOverride All allows using .htaccess
AllowOverride All
</Directory>
so the /etc/apache2/sites-available/example.dev.conf will look like this
<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerName example.dev
ServerAlias www.example.dev
ServerAdmin admin@example.dev
DocumentRoot /var/www/example.dev/public_html
<Directory /var/www/example.dev/public_html >
# AllowOverride All allows using .htaccess
AllowOverride All
</Directory>
</VirtualHost>
Update 2
If you want to process url routes make further changes
<Directory /var/www/example.dev/public_html >
Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews
AllowOverride All
Order allow,deny
allow from all
</Directory>
