XAMPP Subdomain with Joomla Site - php

Question

I'm using XAMPP v3.2.4 and I don't know if this makes any difference but Joomla 3.9.14
In my local environment I access my Joomla site by visiting localhost/mysite. I now want to have a sub domain localhost/apps.mysite.
I've created a folder called apps and placed this in my Joomla root directory, which is C:\xampp\htdocs\mysite\apps. This folder contains a single index.html file.
I've made the following changes;
In my Windows hosts file I added the following line;
127.0.0.1 localhost/apps.mysite
In my httpd-vhosts.conf file I added;
NameVirtualHost 127.0.0.1:80
<virtualhost *:80="">
DocumentRoot "C:/xampp/htdocs/mysite/apps"
ServerName localhost/apps.mysite
ServerAlias www.apps.mysite.localhost.com
</virtualhost>
I haven't made any other changes to config files. I've restarted Apache a few times, no change.
When I visit the URL http://localhost/apps.mysite I see the following error;
Object not found! The requested URL was not found on this server. If
you entered the URL manually please check your spelling and try again.
If you think this is a server error, please contact the webmaster.
Error 404 localhost Apache/2.4.41 (Win64) OpenSSL/1.1.1c PHP/7.3.9
What do I need to change in order to access my subdomain at http://localhost/apps.mysite

Answer 1

First host file does not handle folders, just map IP addresses to hostname.
Host file should be
127.0.0.1 localhost apps.mysite
or
127.0.0.1 localhost
127.0.0.1 apps.mysite
I prefer the second method because I can comment the line..
Second Your virtual host ServerName localhost/apps.mysite does not work with sub folders.
Valid Servername values can be: domain.com, example.com, site1.example.com, user.site1.example.com and son on.
A virtual host example to map the apps.mysite should be:
<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerName apps.mysite
ServerAlias www.apps.mysite
## Vhost Document Root
DocumentRoot "C:/xampp/htdocs/mysite/apps"
</VirtualHost>
This is a minimal example, no logs defined or directory specific rules. With this configuration you will be able to reach your site by using http://apps.mysite only on your computer because the host file is resolving the "apps.mysite" to your localhost (127.0.0.1).
What do I need to change in order to access my subdomain at http://localhost/apps.mysite
http://localhost/apps.mysite is not a sub-domain is a domain localhost with a folder apps.mysite, a valid subdomain is subDomain.domain.com.
.com is a top level domain
domain.com is a domain name
subDomain.domain.com is a subdomain of domain.com
Hope it helps.

Answer 2

Start by creating a VirtualHost for localhost in case you want to use that for a bit of fiddling
# Virtual Hosts
#
<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerName localhost
ServerAlias localhost
DocumentRoot "C:/xampp/htdocs"
<Directory "C:/xampp/htdocs"/>
Options +Indexes +Includes +FollowSymLinks +MultiViews
AllowOverride All
Require local
</Directory>
</VirtualHost>
## then add main site
<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerName mysite.local
ServerAlias www.mysite.local
DocumentRoot "C:/xampp/htdocs/mysite/"
<Directory "C:/xampp/htdocs/mysite/"/>
Options +Indexes +Includes +FollowSymLinks +MultiViews
AllowOverride All
Require local
</Directory>
</VirtualHost>
## then add the sub domain
<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerName aps.mysite.local
ServerAlias www.aps.mysite.local
DocumentRoot "C:/xampp/htdocs/mysiteapps/"
<Directory "C:/xampp/htdocs/mysiteapps/"/>
Options +Indexes +Includes +FollowSymLinks +MultiViews
AllowOverride All
Require local
</Directory>
</VirtualHost>
You will need to add these 2 sites to your C:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts file like this
127.0.0.1 mysite.local aps.mysite.local
::1 mysite.local aps.mysite.local
For the change to the HOSTS file you will either need to reboot or refresh the DNS Cache like this from a command window
>ipconfig /flushdns