When I develop this website locally I use n12v.dev virtual host. n12v.dev/index.html is just ~/Sites/n12v.com/public/index.html on the file system.
You can achieve this by either using Pow or /etc/hosts and Apache.
The easy way: Pow
Install
curl get.pow.cx | sh
Use
ln -s ~/Sites/n12v.com ~/.pow/n12v
Now n12v.dev serves index.html.
To serve a directory with a name different from “public”:
mkdir ~/.pow/usercss
ln -s ~/Sites/usercss/www ~/.pow/usercss/public
The hard way: /etc/hosts and Apache
Open /etc/hosts in Sublime or your favourite text editor and add:
127.0.0.1 n12v.dev
fe80::1%lo0 n12v.dev
fe80::1%lo0 is an IPv6 address. Without it your local site might run too slow.
Check if it works correctly:
ping n12v.dev
PING n12v.dev (127.0.0.1): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 127.0.0.1: icmp_seq=0 ttl=64 time=0.040 ms
64 bytes from 127.0.0.1: icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=0.071 ms
Press ctrl C to stop it. If you see ping: cannot resolve n12v.dev: Unknown host then run
sudo dscacheutil -flushcache
Apache
Mac OS X Mountain Lion ships with Apache 2.2.22. You don’t need to install it.
Open /etc/apache2/extra/httpd-vhosts.conf and add the following code to the bottom
<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerName n12v.dev
DocumentRoot /Users/nv/Sites/n12v.com/public
ErrorLog /Users/nv/Sites/n12v.com/error.log
CustomLog /Users/nv/Sites/n12v.com/access.log common
</VirtualHost>
Note that “nv” is my username; yours is different.
Check if you haven’t made any typos:
apachectl configtest
Syntax OK
Restart Apache:
sudo apachectl restart
That’s it. http://n12v.dev should serve ~/Sites/n12v.com/public/index.html
Troubleshooting 500 Internal Server Error
- Open /etc/apache2/httpd.conf
- Find
<Directory "/Library/WebServer/Documents"> section
- Replace
Order deny,allow
Deny from all
with
Order allow,deny
Allow from all
- Set DocumentRoot to /Users/nv/Sites