Virtual hosts without having a domain

Sure… I have a bunch of sites set up on a local-LAN box with virtual hosts:

<VirtualHost _default_:80>

  # Server name
  #
  ServerName  foo.com.local
  ServerAlias www.foo.com.local

...blah, blah, blah...

</VirtualHost>

The rub is that on the box where you run the browser, you have to have a bunch of entries like this in /etc/hosts:

#
<IP address>                    foo.com.local

The /etc/hosts entries have to be replicated to every box running a browser that wants/needs to access the site(!!!!). Not very convenient but doable…

Unless you're some kind of control freak or have a fetish about unauthorized access, just get a domain name. You're life will be so much easier. This is why God invented DNS…

-- sw

Using /etc/hosts is great for testing before the domain has been bought or propagated.