Configure PHP and Virtual Host macOS High Sierra

Apache is pre installed on macOS High Sierra. We just need to run its service with the following command to activate it.

$ sudo apachectl start

Then we just open http://localhost via browser. Apache will display a default HTML page come with it.

Activating PHP Module

High Sierra also comes with PHP 7. So we don’t need to install it manually. To activate PHP module

Edit /etc/apache2/httpd.conf
Uncomment / remove remark of #LoadModule php7_module libexec/apache2/libphp7.so
Save it and restart apache using
```
     $ sudo apachectl restart
```

After applying the steps above, the php module should be activated and ready to use. In this post we will test it after configuring virtual host.

Configuring Virtual Host

The steps of configuring apache virtual host are :

Enabling virtual host configuration in apache config by editing /etc/apache2/httpd.conf.
```
 $ sudo nano /etc/apache2/httpd.conf
```
Uncomment the section Include /private/etc/apache2/extra/httpd-vhosts.conf, then save it.
Create site directory. As an example in this post, let’s create a Site folder in home directory called </code>/Users/USERNAME/Sites</code>. Our website sample directory will be put in it, let’s create a directory called </code>/Users/USERNAME/Sites/neutro.io</code> and create an /Users/USERNAME/Sites/neutro.io/index.php with simple PHP syntax.
```
 <?php
 phpinfo();
 ?>
```

Create virtual host configuration by editing the virtual host config

 $ sudo nano /etc/apache2/extra/httpd-vhosts.conf

The following code is an example of virtual host with domain name neutro.io

 <VirtualHost *:80>
     ServerName neutro.io
     ServerAlias www.neutro.io
     DocumentRoot "/Users/neutro/Sites/neutro.io"

 <Directory /Users/neutro/Sites/neutro.io>
         Options Indexes FollowSymLinks
         #Options All Indexes FollowSymLinks
         AllowOverride None
         Require all granted
 </Directory>


     ErrorLog "/private/var/log/apache2/neutro.io-error_log"
     CustomLog "/private/var/log/apache2/neutro.io-access_log" common
     ServerAdmin web@neutro.io
 </VirtualHost>

In this example, we create a neutro.io virtual host that refers to /Users/neutro/Sites/neutro.io as physical directory.

Register domain for localhost

Since we use neutro.io as domain for localhost, we need to add the domain and www alias to resolve to the localhost address by editing
```
    $ sudo nano /etc/hosts
```
and add the following line
```
    127.0.0.1   neutro.io   www.neutro.io
```
Restart apache
```
 $ sudo apachectl restart
```

When we open in browser http://neutro.io, we should get a page that display PHP info.

Losing Default Localhost

After configuring the virtual host, we may lose the previous default localhost that points to /Library/WebServer/Documents/ directory. We may get a 403 Forbidden Error when visiting http://localhost. To get around this, we need to add in a vhost for localhost and declare this vhost before any of the others. The following code is our new Virtual host after adding config for localhost.

<VirtualHost *:80>
    ServerName localhost
    DocumentRoot /Library/WebServer/Documents/
</VirtualHost>

<VirtualHost *:80>
    ServerName neutro.io
    ServerAlias www.neutro.io
    DocumentRoot "/Users/neutro/Sites/neutro.io"

   <Directory /Users/neutro/Sites/neutro.io>
        Options Indexes FollowSymLinks
        #Options All Indexes FollowSymLinks
        AllowOverride None
        Require all granted
   </Directory>


    ErrorLog "/private/var/log/apache2/neutro.io-error_log"
    CustomLog "/private/var/log/apache2/neutro.io-access_log" common
    ServerAdmin web@neutro.io
</VirtualHost>

Restart apache and open http://localhost in browser.

References

https://websitebeaver.com/set-up-localhost-on-macos-high-sierra-apache-mysql-and-php-7-with-sslhttps
https://coolestguidesontheplanet.com/set-up-virtual-hosts-in-apache-on-macos-high-sierra-10-13/

Activating PHP Module

Configuring Virtual Host

Losing Default Localhost

References

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