When I work on my local machine on a website, I usually setup the virtual host on a sub-domain setup on the localhost. I feel comfortable using a sub-domain rather than setting up an Alias. I’ve seen many people know about it, but there are many who don’t, and this is for them.

So what do you have to do to setup a sub-domain on the localhost? It is not a rocket science but one must know where to do it, especially on a Windows box.

On Windows OS browse to {Drive on which your Windows OS is installed}:/{WINDOWS/WINNT}/system32/drivers/etc/. Open “hosts” file into a text editor, and you will see something similar to this:

# Copyright (c) 1993-1999 Microsoft Corp.
#
# This is a sample HOSTS file used by Microsoft TCP/IP for Windows.
#
# This file contains the mappings of IP addresses to host names. Each
# entry should be kept on an individual line. The IP address should
# be placed in the first column followed by the corresponding host name.
# The IP address and the host name should be separated by at least one
# space.
#
# Additionally, comments (such as these) may be inserted on individual
# lines or following the machine name denoted by a '#' symbol.
#
# For example:
#
#      102.54.94.97     rhino.acme.com          # source server
#       38.25.63.10     x.acme.com              # x client host

127.0.0.1       localhost

The last line represents the hop any request to http://localhost/ will go through. The IP 127.0.0.1 is used (usually) for you localhost, and going to http://localhost/ will access the files under the root of directory setup for it. Now if you want to setup a sub-domain called “myself”, i.e. http://myself.localhost/, then you add the following line at the end of the file.

127.0.0.1       myself.localhost

On a Linux box, “hosts” file is located under /etc/. You will require “root” access to edit this file or the user access who has priviledge to edit this file. Similar to Windows system, add the following line into the file:

127.0.0.1       myself.localhost

You don’t have to restart your web server for this change to take effect. But you will have to setup the virtual host to point to this sub-domain, which will require you to restart the web server.

Thank You.