How To (Automatically) Backup Your Website Into Dropbox or Copy.com

As owners of websites, one of the more important things you should do is to regularly backup the website. Most web hosting providers will enable daily or weekly backups, mainly for their disaster recovery purpose only. If you want to personally oversee a backup of your website, you can do it by yourself using the Backup function in hosting control panels like cPanel, Plesk and DirectAdmin. As a webmaster or domain owner, you are responsible for this task.

A good backup should have following criteria:

• Backup your data as frequently as possible.
• Give higher priority to critical data like database and web contents. Try to exclude temporary files.
• Your backup should NOT be saved inside the same server.
• Your backup should be retrievable and accessible anytime, anywhere.
• You should get notified for every backup status which has been scheduled.
• Your backup should be compressed, if disk space or bandwidth is your concern.

It is good if you can have your one FTP server to store backup remotely. But, what if the FTP server is down? How can we automate the backup task with limited access to the server? How can you be sure that the availability is always there? Cloud storage is your answer.

Cloud storage is becoming the best way to store files. Popular providers like Amazon S3, Dropbox, iCloud and Box.net are offering these facilities for free with some limitations. But, none of them are supporting FTP as the medium to transfer while almost all of webhosting providers only allow this transfer method.

Backup Box / Movers.io

Here’s where Backup Box/Movers.io comes in. Backup Box helps you securely transfer anything on an FTP server to your Dropbox account. Actually, Backup Box can integrate your FTP account with cloud storage providers like Amazon, GitHub, Box.net and Flickr as well. At this very moment, only Dropbox integration is supported while the others are still under development. It is free to use, with limited features like monthly backup schedule and immediate transfer schedule. In this post, I am focusing on preparing the backup data for weekly backup while running on cPanel server.

We can use this tool with various ways of implementation such as 1, directly copying the web directory using FTP and transferring to Dropbox (compressed or uncompressed) or 2, creating a compressed backup (cPanel backup) and using FTP to fetch the backup to Dropbox.

Before we proceed with the tutorial, ensure that you have following required information:

• An FTP account which is mapped to your web directory. Get it from your hosting control panel.
• A Dropbox account. You can register here for free. 
• Or A Copy account. You can register here for free. (Recommended)
• A Backup Box account. You can register here for free or movers account at http://movers.io/.

Web Directory > FTP > Dropbox

Since the database is also important, we need to prepare the database backup and put it into our web directory. If you are running on Linux hosting, you can use a task scheduler called a cron job with some help from mysqldump. In cPanel, it is located under cPanel > Advanced > Cron jobs.

Let’s use the following data as an example:

1. Web directory path: /home/username/public_html  
2. cPanel username: mycpanel  
3. cPanel password: mypass123$  

Create a new weekly cron job and use the following command:

view plaincopy to clipboardprint?

1. mysqldump --opt -Q -u mycpanel -p'mypass123$' --all-databases > /home/username/public_html/databases.sql  

Here’s An Example:

This will create an SQL backup file which includes all the databases under your cPanel account. Login into Backup Box. On the left panel, login into the FTP account by clicking the ‘gear’ icon. On the right panel, login into your Dropbox account.

You can choose Transfer public_html as a folder in the Transfer Options. This will transfer the whole public_html folder including all files into your Dropbox account. You can now start the immediate transfer by clicking Review. This will transfer the public_html folder to Dropbox. Once done, you can create Monthly schedule to automate this backup task monthly. Just click Monthly > select Date and Time > Finalize and Run. Note: If you want to use weekly or daily backup, you need to upgrade your subscription as stated in the website. Do not forget to change the cron job setting based on when you want the backup schedule to happen

CPanel Backup > FTP > Dropbox

The good thing about cPanel is you can generate your own backup automatically using cPanel API. In this case, we will use PHP script to run on schedule to generate backup. Since the backup location needs to be exclusively for Backup Box, we will need to create an FTP account which is mapped to a new backup folder.

Go to cPanel > FTP and create an FTP account as the screenshot below. Do not create the FTP directory under public_html because it is accessible publicly via web browser (unless you protect the directory with a password):

We need to use PHP with cPanel API to trigger the backup process. Download this file (cpanel-php-backup.zip) and unzip it. You should see 2 files, cpanel-backup.php and xmlapi.php.inc. Change all required information inside cpanel-backup.php as below:

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1. // Credentials for cPanel account  
2. $source_server_ip = ""; // Server IP or domain name eg: 212.122.3.77 or cpanel.domain.tld  
3. $cpanel_account = ""; // cPanel username  
4. $cpanel_password = ""; // cPanel password  
5.   
6. // Credentials for FTP to Backup Box  
7. $ftpacct = ""; // FTP account  
8. $ftppass = ""; // FTP password  
9. $email_notify = ''; // Email address for backup notification  

Save the file and upload both files into your public_html directory using FTP. You can start to generate a backup by accessing the PHP file directly via browser, which is usuallyhttp://www.yourwebsite.com/cpanel-backup.php .

In order to automate cPanel backup creation, we need to setup a weekly cron job into cPanel and use following command:

1. php -q /home/username/public_html/cpanel-backup.php  

Here is a sample:

Login into Backup Box. On the left panel, login into the FTP account (use the backup box FTP account) and in the right panel, login into your Dropbox account:

Since we store backup files into a dedicated folder, we can only transfer the contents of it. Select Transfer only the contents of / in the Transfer Options as the transfer method.

You can now start the immediate transfer by clicking Review. This will transfer the public_html folder to Dropbox. Once done, you can create Monthly schedule to automate this backup task monthly. Just click Monthly > select Date and Time > Finalize and Run.

Note: If you want to use weekly or daily backup, you need to upgrade your subscription as stated in the website. If you do, do not forget to change the cron job setting according to your backup schedule. Another thing, the PHP script will delete all previous cPanel backup before it generate new backups. This to make sure your backup will not eat up much disk space.

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Convert root filesystem to LVM

I converted root filesystem to lvm since the root partition was huge and I needed more flexibility in managing the partitions. Besides, lvm would also enable for easy backups with lvm snapshots.

I had a sizable swap partition of 2GB which I used to transfer my root files to and rebooted to it, prior to the conversion.

Please know what you are doing prior and make sure to create backups.

1. This is what the partitions looked like prior to the change:
   

   # df -h
   Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
   /dev/sda3             228G  1.4G  215G   1% /
   /dev/sda1              99M   17M   77M  19% /boot
   none                 1014M     0 1014M   0% /dev/shm
   
   # fdisk -l
   Disk /dev/sda: 250.0 GB, 250000000000 bytes
   255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 30394 cylinders
   Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
   
      Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
   /dev/sda1   *           1          13      104391   83  Linux
   /dev/sda2              14         267     2040255   82  Linux swap
   /dev/sda3             268       30394   241995127+  83  Linux
   

2. With the current setup, I have a better sized partition, and can further create/resize partitions to add or remove at will:

   # df -h
   Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
   /dev/mapper/vg0-lvroot0
                          24G  1.3G   22G   6% /
   /dev/sda1              99M   19M   75M  21% /boot
   none                 1014M     0 1014M   0% /dev/shm
   
   # fdisk -l
   Disk /dev/sda: 250.0 GB, 250000000000 bytes
   255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 30394 cylinders
   Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
   
      Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
   /dev/sda1   *           1          13      104391   83  Linux
   /dev/sda2              14         267     2040255   83  Linux swap
   /dev/sda3             268       30394   241995127+  8e  Linux LVM
   

3. I had a sizable swap partition of 2GB, so I turned it off.
   
   # swapoff -a
4. Formated the swap partition as ext3 and copied over the root files:
   
   # mke2fs -j /dev/sda2
# mount /dev/sda2 /mnt/
# find / -xdev | cpio -pvmd /mnt
5. Once the files were transfered. I then edited the "/mnt/etc/fstab" file to reflect the new root.
   

   /dev/sda2      /    ext3       defaults 1 1
   

6. Add a grub section to use "/dev/sda2" as the new root.

   title CentOS (2.6.9-55.0.9.ELsmp.sda2)
           root (hd0,0)
           kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.9-55.0.9.ELsmp ro root=/dev/sda2
           initrd /initrd-2.6.9-55.0.9.ELsmp.img
   

7. After reboot the original root (/dev/sda3) is no longer mounted and is free to work with.
8. Change the partition type from Linux to LVM (8e).
         # fdisk /dev/sda
      Command (m for help): t
      Partition number (1-4): 3
      Hex code (type L to list codes): 8e
      Changed system type of partition 4 to 8e (Unknown)
      Command (m for help): w
9. Inform the Operating System for the partition table changes.
   
         #partprobe
10. Initialize LVM
    
          # vgscan
11. Make the new partition into a Physical Volume.
    
          # pvcreate /dev/sda3          
12. Create a new volume group.
    
          # vgcreate vg0 /dev/sda3
13. Create a logical volume to hold the new root (/).
    
          # lvcreate -L 24G -n lvroot0 vg0
14. Make a filesystem in the logical volume and copy the root files onto it.
    
          # mke2fs -j /dev/vg0/lvroot0
      # mount /dev/vg0/lvroot0 /mnt
      # yum update kernel
      # find / -xdev | cpio -pvmd /mnt
15. Additionally, since the new root is now lvm, the initrd image file should have support for it else kernel will not be able to find root on reboot and end up with a kernel panic.
    Note: At this stage, instead of creating a new image, I update the kernel so that the new image supports lvm. LVM support can also be checked via extracting the initrd image file and checking for lvm binary in the bin folder.
    # mkdir -p /tmp/kill/00
# cd /tmp/kill/00
# gunzip < /boot/initrd-2.6.9-55.0.9.ELsmp.img | cpio -id
# ls -al bin/lvm
-r-x------ 1 root root 1417512 May 24 14:38 bin/lvm
    If image does not have the lvm binary, create and move it to the /boot folder.
    # chroot /mnt
# mount -t proc /proc /proc
# mount -t sysfs /sys /sys
# vgmknodes -v
# mkinitrd -v initrd-2.6.9-55.0.9.ELsmp.lv.img 2.6.9-55.0.9.ELsmp
16. Edit "/mnt/etc/fstab" on the new root so that / is mounted on /dev/vg0/lvroot0.
    

    /dev/vg0/lvroot0       /    ext3       defaults 1 1
    

17. Add grub section to use "/dev/vg0/lvroot0" to boot to.

    title CentOS (2.6.9-55.0.9.ELsmp.lvroot0)
            root (hd0,0)
            kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.9-55.0.9.ELsmp ro root=/dev/vg0/lvroot0
            initrd /initrd-2.6.9-55.0.9.ELsmp.lv.img
    

18. Reboot, and enjoy the flexibility of lvm!!

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The Ultimate Wget Download Guide With 15 Awesome Examples

wget utility is the best option to download files from internet. wget can pretty much handle all complex download situations including large file downloads, recursive downloads, non-interactive downloads, multiple file downloads etc.,

In this article let us review how to use wgetfor various download scenarios using 15 awesome wget examples.

1. Download Single File with wget

The following example downloads a single file from internet and stores in the current directory.

$ wget http://www.openss7.org/repos/tarballs/strx25-0.9.2.1.tar.bz2

While downloading it will show a progress bar with the following information:

• %age of download completion (for e.g. 31% as shown below)
• Total amount of bytes downloaded so far (for e.g. 1,213,592 bytes as shown below)
• Current download speed (for e.g. 68.2K/s as shown below)
• Remaining time to download (for e.g. eta 34 seconds as shown below)

Download in progress:

$ wget http://www.openss7.org/repos/tarballs/strx25-0.9.2.1.tar.bz2
Saving to: `strx25-0.9.2.1.tar.bz2.1'

31% [=================> 1,213,592   68.2K/s  eta 34s

Download complete

$ wget http://www.openss7.org/repos/tarballs/strx25-0.9.2.1.tar.bz2
Saving to: `strx25-0.9.2.1.tar.bz2'

100%[======================>] 3,852,374   76.8K/s   in 55s    

2009-09-25 11:15:30 (68.7 KB/s) - `strx25-0.9.2.1.tar.bz2' saved [3852374/3852374]

2. Download and Store With a Different File name Using wget -O

By default wget will pick the filename from the last word after last forward slash, which may not be appropriate always.

Wrong: Following example will download and store the file with name: download_script.php?src_id=7701

$ wget http://www.vim.org/scripts/download_script.php?src_id=7701

Even though the downloaded file is in zip format, it will get stored in the file as shown below.

$ ls
download_script.php?src_id=7701

Correct: To correct this issue, we can specify the output file name using the -O option as:

$ wget -O taglist.zip http://www.vim.org/scripts/download_script.php?src_id=7701

3. Specify Download Speed / Download Rate Using wget –limit-rate

While executing the wget, by default it will try to occupy full possible bandwidth. This might not be acceptable when you are downloading huge files on production servers. So, to avoid that we can limit the download speed using the –limit-rate as shown below.

In the following example, the download speed is limited to 200k

$ wget --limit-rate=200k http://www.openss7.org/repos/tarballs/strx25-0.9.2.1.tar.bz2

4. Continue the Incomplete Download Using wget -c

Restart a download which got stopped in the middle using wget -c option as shown below.

$ wget -c http://www.openss7.org/repos/tarballs/strx25-0.9.2.1.tar.bz2

This is very helpful when you have initiated a very big file download which got interrupted in the middle. Instead of starting the whole download again, you can start the download from where it got interrupted using option -c

Note: If a download is stopped in middle, when you restart the download again without the option -c, wget will append .1 to the filename automatically as a file with the previous name already exist. If a file with .1 already exist, it will download the file with .2 at the end.

5. Download in the Background Using wget -b

For a huge download, put the download in background using wget option -b as shown below.

$ wget -b http://www.openss7.org/repos/tarballs/strx25-0.9.2.1.tar.bz2
Continuing in background, pid 1984.
Output will be written to `wget-log'.

It will initiate the download and gives back the shell prompt to you. You can always check the status of the download using tail -f as shown below.

$ tail -f wget-log
Saving to: `strx25-0.9.2.1.tar.bz2.4'

     0K .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........  1% 65.5K 57s
    50K .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........  2% 85.9K 49s
   100K .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........  3% 83.3K 47s
   150K .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........  5% 86.6K 45s
   200K .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........  6% 33.9K 56s
   250K .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........  7%  182M 46s
   300K .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........  9% 57.9K 47s

Also, make sure to review our previous multitail article on how to use tail command effectively to view multiple files.

6. Mask User Agent and Display wget like Browser Using wget –user-agent

Some websites can disallow you to download its page by identifying that the user agent is not a browser. So you can mask the user agent by using –user-agent options and show wget like a browser as shown below.

$ wget --user-agent="Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.9.0.3) Gecko/2008092416 Firefox/3.0.3" URL-TO-DOWNLOAD

7. Test Download URL Using wget –spider

When you are going to do scheduled download, you should check whether download will happen fine or not at scheduled time. To do so, copy the line exactly from the schedule, and then add –spider option to check.

$ wget --spider DOWNLOAD-URL

If the URL given is correct, it will say

$ wget --spider download-url
Spider mode enabled. Check if remote file exists.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
Length: unspecified [text/html]
Remote file exists and could contain further links,
but recursion is disabled -- not retrieving.

This ensures that the downloading will get success at the scheduled time. But when you had give a wrong URL, you will get the following error.

$ wget --spider download-url
Spider mode enabled. Check if remote file exists.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 404 Not Found
Remote file does not exist -- broken link!!!

You can use the spider option under following scenarios:

• Check before scheduling a download.
• Monitoring whether a website is available or not at certain intervals.
• Check a list of pages from your bookmark, and find out which pages are still exists.

8. Increase Total Number of Retry Attempts Using wget –tries

If the internet connection has problem, and if the download file is large there is a chance of failures in the download. By default wget retries 20 times to make the download successful.

If needed, you can increase retry attempts using –tries option as shown below.

$ wget --tries=75 DOWNLOAD-URL

9. Download Multiple Files / URLs Using Wget -i

First, store all the download files or URLs in a text file as:

$ cat > download-file-list.txt
URL1
URL2
URL3
URL4

Next, give the download-file-list.txt as argument to wget using -i option as shown below.

$ wget -i download-file-list.txt

10. Download a Full Website Using wget –mirror

Following is the command line which you want to execute when you want to download a full website and made available for local viewing.

$ wget --mirror -p --convert-links -P ./LOCAL-DIR WEBSITE-URL

• –mirror : turn on options suitable for mirroring.
• -p : download all files that are necessary to properly display a given HTML page.
• –convert-links : after the download, convert the links in document for local viewing.
• -P ./LOCAL-DIR : save all the files and directories to the specified directory.

11. Reject Certain File Types while Downloading Using wget –reject

You have found a website which is useful, but don’t want to download the images you can specify the following.

$ wget --reject=gif WEBSITE-TO-BE-DOWNLOADED

12. Log messages to a log file instead of stderr Using wget -o

When you wanted the log to be redirected to a log file instead of the terminal.

$ wget -o download.log DOWNLOAD-URL

13. Quit Downloading When it Exceeds Certain Size Using wget -Q

When you want to stop download when it crosses 5 MB you can use the following wget command line.

$ wget -Q5m -i FILE-WHICH-HAS-URLS

Note: This quota will not get effect when you do a download a single URL. That is irrespective of the quota size everything will get downloaded when you specify a single file. This quota is applicable only for recursive downloads.

14. Download Only Certain File Types Using wget -r -A

You can use this under following situations:

• Download all images from a website
• Download all videos from a website
• Download all PDF files from a website

$ wget -r -A.pdf http://url-to-webpage-with-pdfs/

15. FTP Download With wget

You can use wget to perform FTP download as shown below.

Anonymous FTP download using Wget

$ wget ftp-url

FTP download using wget with username and password authentication.

$ wget --ftp-user=USERNAME --ftp-password=PASSWORD DOWNLOAD-URL

If you liked this article, please bookmark it with delicious or Stumble.

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Certificate Installation: WHM/cPanel 11

1. Login to the cPanel 'Control Panel'

2. Click SSL/TLS Manager under the Security section.



3. Click on Generate, view, upload or delete SSL Certificates in the 'Certificates' section.



4. Import Domain/End Entity Certificate.

a. Copy and Paste the contents of 'yourDomainName.crt' into the text box labeled 'Paste the crt below' in the 'Upload a New Certificate' section.
- or -
b. Click 'Browse' and navigate to 'yourDomainName.crt' and then click 'Upload'.



5. Click Go Back.



6. Scroll down to the bottom of the page and click on Return to SSL Manager.



7. Click on Setup a SSL Certificate to work with your site.




8. Select the domain you are using from the Domain drop-down menu. The system will attempt to fetch the SSL Certificate andPrivate Key for you.
Note: You do have the option to copy and paste these files into their appropriate boxes at this time.

9. In the box labled CA Bundle, paste the contents of the CA Bundle file that was provided.



Note: If you did not receive a ca-bundle file, you may download one from our Root & Intermediate Certificates section of our Downloads area. Please download the one that corresponds to the certificate that you have. If you are unsure, please contact support.

10. Click on Install Certificate.

The certificate is now added to your server and assigned to the domain.

Article Details

Article ID: 1208	Created On: 28 Oct 2008 12:56 AM

This answer was helpful  This answer was not helpful

User Comments Add a Comment

Posted By: Prakashkumar (Prakashkumar84@yahoo.co.in) On: 10 Jul 2009 09:04 PM If "Setup a SSL certificate to work with your site" option is not available, your web host may have disabled it. You will need to contact them about how to install the bundle file.

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FTP Filezilla - 421 Sorry, cleartext sessions are not accepted on this server.

Some times when  you connect to the webhost via FileZilla you may encounter this error message.

"421 Sorry, cleartext sessions are not accepted on this server."

Solution:

Just add a ftpes:// before the domain name

Old One,

host : domain.com

username : xxx

pass : yyy

port : 21

New,

host : ftpes://domain.com

username : xxx

pass : yyy

port : 21

Advanced Option,

Login to  Web Host Manager
Go To : Service Configuration
Go To : FTP Server Configuration
Check that  :
TLS Encryption Support : set to  “Optional”

Try that, it will work.

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How to Set Up Apache Virtual Hosts on CentOS 6

About Virtual Hosts

---

Virtual Hosts are used to run more than one domain off of a single IP address. This is especially useful to people who need to run several sites off of one virtual private server. The sites display different information to the visitors, depending on with which the users accessed the site.There is no limit to the number of virtual hosts that can be added to a VPS.

Set Up

The steps in this tutorial require the user to have root privileges.Furthermore, if I reference the user in a step, I’ll use the name www. You can implement whatever username suits you. 

Additionally, you need to have apache already installed and running on your virtual server 
If this is not the case, you can download it with this command:

sudo yum install httpd

Step One— Create a New Directory

---

The first step in creating a virtual host is to a create a directory where we will keep the new website’s information. 

This location will be your Document Root in the Apache virtual configuration file later on. By adding a -p to the line of code, the command automatically generates all the parents for the new directory.

sudo mkdir -p /var/www/example.com/public_html

You will need to designate an actual DNS approved domain, or an IP address, to test that a virtual host is working. In this tutorial we will use example.com as a placeholder for a correct domain name. 

However, should you want to use an unapproved domain name to test the process you will find information on how to make it work on your local computer in Step Six. 

Step Two—Grant Permissions

---

We need to grant ownership of the directory to the user, instead of just keeping it on the root system.

 sudo chown -R www:www /var/www/example.com/public_html 

Additionally, it is important to make sure that everyone will be able to read our new files.

 sudo chmod 755 /var/www

Now you are all done with permissions.

Step Three— Create the Page

---

We need to create a new file called index.html within our configurations directory.

sudo vi /var/www/example.com/public_html/index.html

We can add some text to the file so we will have something to look at when the IP redirects to the virtual host.

  
    
  
  
    

Success: You Have Set Up a Virtual Host

Save and Exit

Step Four—Turn on Virtual Hosts

---

The next step is to enter into the apache configuration file itself.

sudo vi /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf

There are a few lines to look for.
Make sure that your text matches what you see below.

#Listen 12.34.56.78:80
Listen 80

Scroll down to the very bottom of the document to the section called Virtual Hosts.

NameVirtualHost *:80
#
# NOTE: NameVirtualHost cannot be used without a port specifier
# (e.g. :80) if mod_ssl is being used, due to the nature of the
# SSL protocol.
#    

#    
# VirtualHost example:
# Almost any Apache directive may go into a VirtualHost container.
# The first VirtualHost section is used for requests without a known
# server name.
# 

     ServerAdmin webmaster@example.com
     DocumentRoot /var/www/example.com/public_html
     ServerName www.example.com
     ServerAlias example.com
     ErrorLog /var/www/example.com/error.log
     CustomLog /var/www/example.com/requests.log

The most important lines to focus on are the lines that say NameVirtualHost, Virtual Host, Document Root, and Server Name. Let’s take these one at a time. 

-Uncomment (remove the number sign) NameVirtualHost without making any changes. The star means that any IP address going through port 80 will be a virtual host. As your system probably only has one IP address this is not an issue—however, if you prefer, you can replace the star with your IP address.

-You can leave the rest of the number marks in place until you reach the line . Uncomment everything from there through .

-Leave as is—its details must match with those in the NameVirtual Host section. If you replaced the star with your IP address in that section, be sure to do the same here. 

-Document Root is key! For this section, write in the extension of the new directory created in Step One. If the document root is incorrect or absent you will not be able to set up the virtual host.

-Server Name is another important piece of information, containing the virtual host’s domain name (eg. www.example.com). Make sure that you spell the domain out in full; we will put in any alternate possibilities in the next line.

-ServerAlias is a new line in the config file that is not there by default. Adding it will allow you to list a few variants of the domain name, for example without the www in the front. 

---

The rest of the lines in this section are not required to set up a virtual host. However, it is still helpful to know what they do. 

-Server admin asks for the webmaster’s email. 

-The Error Logs and Custom Logs keep track of any issues with the server. The error log covers issues that arise while maintaining the server, and the custom log tracks server requests. You can set up a custom location for these processes.

-Make sure that is uncommented; then save and exit.

Step Five—Restart Apache

---

We’ve made a lot of the changes to the configuration. However, they will not take effect until Apache is restarted. 
First stop all apache processes:

sudo apachectl -k stop

Then start up apache once again.

sudo /etc/init.d/httpd start

You may see the following error:

Could not reliably determine the server's fully qualified domain name, using 127.0.0.1 for ServerName

The message is just a warning, and you will be able to access your virtual host without any further issues.

Optional Step Six—Setting Up the Local Hosts

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If you have pointed your domain name to your virtual private server’s IP address you can skip this step—you do not need to set up local hosts. Your virtual hosts should work. However, if want to try out your new virtual hosts without having to connect to an actual domain name, you can set up local hosts on your computer alone. 

For this step, make sure you are on the computer itself, not your droplet. 

To proceed with this step you need to know your computer’s administrative password, otherwise you will be required to use an actual domain name to test the virtual hosts.

If you are on a Mac or Linux, access the root user (su) on the computer and open up your hosts file:

nano /etc/hosts 

If you are on a Windows Computer, you can find the directions to alter the host file on the Microsoft site

You can add the local hosts details to this file, as seen in the example below. As long as that line is there, directing your browser toward, say, example.com will give you all the virtual host details for the corresponding IP address.

# Host Database
#
# localhost is used to configure the loopback interface
# when the system is booting.  Do not change this entry.
##
127.0.0.1       localhost

#Virtual Hosts 
12.34.56.789    www.example.com 

However, it may be a good idea to delete these made up addresses out of the local hosts folder when you are done to avoid any future confusion. 

Step Seven—RESULTS: See Your Virtual Host in Action

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Once you have finished setting up your virtual host, you can see how it looks online. Type your ip address into the browser (ie. http://12.34.56.789) 

It should look somewhat similar to my handy screenshot

Good Job!

Adding More Virtual Hosts

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To create additional virtual hosts, you can just repeat the process above, being careful to set up a new document root with the appropriate new domain name each time. Then just copy and paste the new Virtual Host information into the Apache Config file, as shown below

     ServerAdmin webmaster@example.com
     DocumentRoot /var/www/example.com/public_html
     ServerName www.example.com
     ServerAlias example.com
     ErrorLog /etc/var/www/example.com/error.log
     CustomLog /var/www/example.com/requests.log


     ServerAdmin webmaster@example.org
     DocumentRoot /var/www/example.org/public_html
     ServerName www.example.org
     ServerAlias example.org
     ErrorLog /var/www/example.org/error.log
     CustomLog /var/www/example.orgrequests.log

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