This is the kind of thing I’ve wanted to setup for months. I had no problem getting it to work at the office, but now I’m trying to set it up on my home machine with no luck.

Both are OSX 10.4 using the default install.

I’m trying to setup multiple testing domains with very erratic results, mostly 403 errors, then it will start working but pointing the wrong directory.

thank you for your tutorial - although I tried the other solutions (NetInfo, Headdress) they did not really work for me. I guess I did something wrong with NetInfo and I didn’t really dug into Headress (plus I need more than just two development domains).

I don’t think doing it the manual way by editing some files is to difficult.

Again, thanks a lot, I definitely like my new shiny .dev-Domains :).

Best regards
- Jérôme

If you’re working on a team, I’d hope you’d have subversion or CVS set up to check them out to your domain.

And running the same versions as your host isn’t hard. But I’ve had no trouble developing in the latest version of PHP and MySQL on a Mac and running it using an old version of both on our Linux production server.

And why would you want to auto-upload when you save? Shouldn’t you do testing first?

I’m a one-man shop developing small to medium sites, so I don’t need a complicated system. Here’s my super simple technique:

Super easy, browser-bookmark based access to everyone of your dev sites.

Here’s how:

I keep my dev sites in the ~sites folder (PhP enabled in Apache) on my Mac. Then I saved a bookmark of the ~sites folder (http://127.0.0.1/~my_user_account/) in my browser’s Bookmarks Toolbar for fast, easy access. I name the bookmark “Local Sites Index.”

Clicking this bookmark opens a webpage listing an index of (dev) site folders in the ~sites directory; but they are listed alphabetically. Click on the “Last Modified” column header and the list re-sorts by date modified to force the most recent to the top of the list. Notice that the address in the address bar now reads: (http://127.0.0.1/~my_user_account/?M=D).

Next, modify the saved bookmark’s address accordingly: http://127.0.0.1/~my_user_account/?M=D

Then put this bookmark in the Bookmarks Toolbar of ALL of your browsers that you need to test in.

THAT’S IT! Now to see your sites, just open any browser and hit the Toolbar Bookmark you’ve just created to display a clickable index of all of your dev sites; all in their Apache/PHP glory–with the most current ones at the top of the list. (You can re-sort alphbetically by clicking the “Name” header.)

I go one step further: I make this ~sites directory page the Homepage in my main dev browsers. Now I merely start any browser and up pops a clickable list of all my dev sites; with the most recent ones right at the top of the list!

Summary: No typing of URLs neccessary, just launch your browser, and click once to see any site that you’re working on.

http://woss.name/2006/11/13/setting-up-local-name-server-on-mac-os-x/

Totally agree. Headdress automates this process and makes development drop dead easy peasy.

that way you can do http://localhost:3000
and absolute links works just fine.

Automates the whole process, and assigns different port numbers for different ‘domains’

We use a dns server to route all .dev domains to the development server and all .gl domains to 127.0.0.1

So maybe somebody can write a tutorial for installing and configuring a dns server on OS X this way.

Assuming you have a single development computer, this method still works except instead of putting 127.0.0.1, put the IP address of the development computer. Everyone who wants to access the development site needs to put the line into their hosts file. linux, windows and mac all have a hosts file.

This is a bit messy of course having to edit many hosts files over many computers.

Another problem is you can’t use catchall subdomains in the hosts files eg. *.website.dev like you can with DNS. I end up having multiple lines for testing eg:

192.168.0.1 http://www.blast.dev
192.168.0.1 blast.dev
192.168.0.1 test.blast.dev
192.168.0.1 someothersubdomain.blast.dev

The solution to all these problems is to use DNS properly although I’ve never figured out how. Does anyone know any good tutorials?

Tim http://bla.st/

Rather than editing httpd.conf (which contains global settings), you can add the virtual host information into /etc/httpd/users/.conf.

This is file is appended to httpd.conf once you login to OS X.

Also, rather than editing the hosts file directly, I recommend using the tool that comes with OS X (Applications/Utilities/Netinfo Manager).

Select Machines->localhost. Click on Duplicate. Enter your details.

Cheers,

To setup a host, you would just type:

sudo virtualhost.sh yourdomain.dev

Answer a couple prompts including what you want the virtual host’s DocumentRoot to be, and away you go. To remove a virtual host you’ve created:

sudo virtualhost –delete yourname.dev

Note that this script is assuming the stock install of Apache that comes with Mac OS X, and that you haven’t already messed around too much in httpd.conf.

http://patrickgibson.com/virtualhost

My 2 cents..

If you’re working with a team, I’ve found a great setup is to have each person do their cvs or svn checkout into a vhost directory, and have apache set up to do mass hosting. for example, i always check out to jh.dev.whateverdomain.com. This way, everyone is working off the same machine, so you only need to maintain 1 dev database and apache setup. You also don’t have to mess with hosts files, if you know how to set up your DNS the right way. Everyone has their own checkout.