Questions Re: Virtual Hosts & MAMP

Question

I hired a computer science student to install and configure MySQL, phpMyAdmin and virtual hosts on my MacBook Pro, but he screwed it up. So I tried to figure it all out myself once again. I finally downloaded a preconfigured package called MAMP. I now apparently have PHP, MySQL and phpMyAdmin up and running on my machine. But that still leaves virtual hosts.
I checked out the MAMP Pro version ($50) at
http://www.living-e.com/products/MAMP-PRO/index.php and read "You can set up many virtual hosts."
That doesn't make sense to me; shouldn't you be able to set up many virtual hosts even with the free version of MAMP? Or does MAMP somehow make it EASIER to create virtual hosts, and the Pro version simply allows you to make many of these simplified virtual hosts?
Unfortunately, MAMP's support forums seem pretty lame, so I decided to ask some questions here. If MAMP Pro does indeed make it easy to create virtual hosts, then I'll purchase it immediately.
If it doesn't, then can anyone point me to a tutorial that explains the entire process, as clearly as possible? I've modified my httpd.conf, hosts and NetInfo files till I'm blue in the face and have asked questions on three different forums. I was able to create virtual hosts even on my PC; surely it can't be that much harder on a Mac.
Thanks!

Answer 1

Yeah, in another post he decided he does not like the Netinfo solution as he is a new Mac user and wants to keep it simple. I believe Netinfo is for DNSing the localnet anyway.
It turns out it is incredibly simple to configure Virtual Hosts. In fact, it is even simpler in Apache 2 than Apache 1.3 because there is a separate component for configuring the Virtual Domains. Here's hoping OSX 10.5 includes Apache 1.2.
What you do is you first edit your hosts file:
sudo nano /private/etc/hosts
Add these lines to point to your local machine domains:
127.0.0.1 host2.example.com
127.0.0.1 Test
Here we are using
http://host2.example.com/
and
http://Test/
as our domains. When you are set up click these links and the pages should open in your browser.
Edit the file at
sudo nano /private/etc/httpd/httpd.conf
to include these Virtual Domain blocks somewhere in the file:
<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerAdmin [email protected]
DocumentRoot /Library/WebServer/Documents/Test/
ServerName Test
ServerAlias Test
ErrorLog /Library/WebServer/Documents/logs/Test-error_log
CustomLog /Library/WebServer/Documents/logs/Test-access_log common
</VirtualHost>
<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerAdmin [email protected]
DocumentRoot /Library/WebServer/Documents/host2/
ServerName host2.example.com
ErrorLog /Library/WebServer/Documents/logs/host2.example.com-error_log
CustomLog /Library/WebServer/Documents/logs/host2.example.com-access_log common
</VirtualHost>
Note that the file does not even contain sample blocks in the config file as Virtual Hosts has been a recent invention. Apache 2, however, integrates VHosts seamlessly.
In this example, I transcribed paths from the default OSX 10.4 Apache installation, so you may need to adjust the paths a bit since it is untested. Please report back so we can adjust the documentation accordingly.
When finished, put some default docs in the target folders and restart Apache:
sudo apachectl restart
You should be up and running. You may need to reboot for the hosts file to activate, unless you know how to dump the cache like a Unix geek.
Oh, and thanks for the patience on this one, I have been figuring it out too.