I have to admit to being completely bowled over by VirtualHostX. VirtualHostX is a utility I found quite by accident, whilst looking around for a way to easily create virtual hosts in OSX.
Virtual hosts?
When developing locally on the Mac (or indeed any platform) it’s essential to be able to set up a web server environment (such as Apache) similar to the one used at a web host. It’s even handier to be able to access the site locally at a proper domain name in your browser (e.g. http://dev.clientname/)
The ‘get your hands dirty’ way
For years I followed Blane Warrene’s instructions from a 2003 article for SitePoint. Dead easy, but requires not only opening up and altering Apache’s httpd.conf file and making amendements there, but also delving into /etc/hosts which isn’t for the beginner or faint of heart.
Headdress, wherefore art thou?!
I then used Headdress for a few years. Headdress was a small OSX application (sadly no longer available – the company who produced it seem to have disappeared) that allowed you to create virtual hosts easily via a nice GUI. However, it didn’t directly access /etc/hosts, so could only ever create websites at localhost ports (e.g. 10.0.0.15:9000). Not ideal.
MAMP Pro. Umm… no.
I recently dabbled with MAMP Pro. Having used basic MAMP for quite a while now (a most excellent way of handling Apache and PHP on a Mac, by the way), the possibility of being able to easily set up virtual domain name hosts via MAMP Pro’s GUI appealed. However, I wasn’t really impressed with the implementation in practice, it seemed pretty buggy. I gave that up and went happily back to regular MAMP.
VirtualHostX to the rescue!
Whilst scratching my head just now trying to remember again how to set up virtual hosts manually (digging into Evernote…) I did a last ditch Google search and found VirtualHostX.
10 second download. 10 second installation. 30 seconds to have first virtual host up and running, with domain name of my choice. It even offered to back up my current Apache settings separately (one click) and detected I was using MAMP, so offered to set that up too (again, one click). Very, very impressive.
A steal at $9 (£6). Highly recommended (in case you already couldn’t tell…)
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