Using Separate Host or Domain Names for Website Development on Windows with IIS or Apache Using Hosts File

Whether you run IIS or Apache you can run local sites similar to 'localhost'.

When you type localhost in your browser's address bar and hit enter, the address always translates to the loopback IP address 127.0.0.1 in IPv4, or ::1 in IPv6.

You can easily create similar names which will always translate to loopback IP address 127.0.0.1 or point to any specific IP address of your choice.

Running Multiple Websites or Domains with Different Domain Names or Host Names with Apache Web Server

If you have read the post on adding hosts names for development on IIS or Apache you may have already started wondering how can you serve or show different content using IIS or Apache.

 

Here we will show you just how easy it is to configure IIS or Apache web server to serve different sites when different hostnames are used.

You may be running any application server, like ColdFusion, PHP, Ruby on Rails, ASP.net, Tomcat, you will find the following information handy.