Overview

This page details the steps required to setup a virtualhost for people that have a current webroot and do not want to lose their current (non-symfony) projects by adding the virtualhost directive, this problem is common when you are using a WAMP environment for development, and have an existing list of projects in c:/wamp/www that you want to keep using.

Step 1 : Create an internal host

Look for the host file on your computer, i found mine in c:/windows/system32/drivers/etc

This is what my old host file looked like :

# comment ...
127.0.0.1       localhost

Add a chosen virtual host, for askeet it would be

# comment ...
127.0.0.1       localhost
127.0.0.1       askeet

Step 2 : Add a virtualhost directive to httpd.conf

Look for the apache config (httpd.conf) i could found mine : C:\wamp\Apache2\conf\httpd.conf

Make sure the following line in your httpd.conf is not commented, or add it if you can't find it.

NameVirtualHost *:80

First we will add a virtualhost for the already existing, non-symfony projects located in c:/wamp/www (or somewhere else). If you forget this after enabling namevirtualhost in your apache config, apache will use the first virtualhost, and without the underlying virtualhost, that would mean that all projects listed in localhost/project1, localhost/project2 would point to your http://askeet chosen host, and thats not what we want right ?

<VirtualHost *:80>
  ServerName localhost
  DocumentRoot "C:\wamp\www" <== update with correct path
  DirectoryIndex index.php
  <Directory "C:\wamp\www"> <== update with correct path
   AllowOverride All
   Order allow,deny
   Allow from All
  </Directory>
</VirtualHost>

After adding the virtualhost you need to add a virtualhost for your symfony project (added as internal host, step 1).

<VirtualHost *:80>
  ServerName askeet <== the chosen virtual host in step1
  DocumentRoot "C:\wamp\www\symfony\web"  <== update with correct path
  DirectoryIndex index.php
  Alias /sf "c:/wamp/php/PEAR/data/symfony/web/sf/" <== update with correct path
  <Directory "C:\wamp\www\symfony\web"> <== update with correct path
   AllowOverride All
   Order allow,deny
   Allow from All
  </Directory>
</VirtualHost>

Restart your apache, no need to reboot.

apachectl -k graceful

Step 3 : Check out what you just did

http://askeet/

and

http://localhost/projectX will point to your old 'non-symfony' projects.