Now that our ACME stack has been installed, let's setup some isolated development areas. To do this, we need to create one or more Virtual Hosts in Apache and setup some local domains.

Apache Virtual Hosts

In part 1, we talked about how Apache sets up the localhost domain pointed to files in /var/www/. This is why http://127.0.0.1/ displays It works! (index.html) when you first visited it and why it should display the current date and time (index.cfm) when you go there now.

Rather than run all of your projects under the same root folder and under the localhost domain, it's often a good idea to create a local domain and separate root folder for each project.

http://dev.acme.localhost

Rather than place project files under /var/www/, I often place them under my home directory or in a folder on another disk or partition.

1. Create a new root web directory.

I'm going to create a new directory at the system's root level. This will contain files for all of my projects. You'll have to use sudo to create the folder as the root user.

Now we need to change the owner of the folder to that of your user account.

Now we can enter this folder under your normal user account and create files and folders without having to use sudo. Let's create a folder for an ACME website:

Create a default page:

2. Create a new Virtual Host entry.

Now we need to let Apache know how to find the files for the ACME website. For that, we need to go to the Apache folder.

Let's go into the sites-available folder and open the default website configuration file.

Actually, let's create a copy so that we don't lose the default settings.

To make things easy, open the acme file in gedit. Notice that the file is owned by the root user.

In the normal distribution of Apache, these settings would be broken up across a few files. The version that is maintained in the Synaptic Package Manager keeps them all in one file, so copying and making changes will be very easy.

3. Create a new link in sites-enabled.

We just edited the acme file in the sites-available folder. Apache only loads Virtual Host configurations in the sites-enabled folder.

In the sites-enabled folder, you can see that there is a link to the default Virtual Host file. Let's create one for acme.

4. Restart Apache

Apache has to be restarted to load the new Virtual Host configurations.

5. Create a new hosts entry.

Every OS has a file that acts like a local Domain Name Server. Open it and add the ServerName you created in the acme file, pointing to 127.0.0.1.

6. Open the URL in a browser.

You should now be able to enter http://dev.acme.localhost into your browser and see the output from /webroot/iknowkungfoo/acme/index.cfm.

That's it for now

Your 64-bit Ubuntu ColdFusion development environment is now up and running at full steam. If you have any questions or if you'd like to see something else added to this version of The ACME Guide, let me know in the Comments or through my Contact form.

Now that I've got my own ACME setup running, I can get back to the CF + OOP Primer and get some work done on that book I'm supposed to be writing. :)