Multiple domains, multiple vhosts, different sites

I am trying to host multiple different rails apps on the same VPS using multiple domains. I am using Apache 2.2.17 on Ubuntu 10.10 using the latest version of Passenger. For Apache, I have multiple vhost files so that I can enable and disable particular sites easily without needing to comment them out or delete them. In addition, I am also using mod_rewrite so that the multiple domains that go to the same rails app appear to go to the same URL so I don't take a hit with search engines as far as duplicate content.

I believe that my DNS is setup properly. For each of the domains, I have a www subdomain as well as some site-specific sub-domains, such as blogs, etc. The issue I am seeing is that Apache appears to matching the www subdomain immediately and not examining the additional URL behind it. Changing ServerAlias does nothing. For example, using my setup, if I enter davidheartsrachel.com, I properly reach my wedding website. However, if I use www.davidheartsrachel.com, I reach my other website, my software development business. The URL is not re-written; it stays as davidheartsrachel.com instead of afewguyscoding.com.

The only way I have been able to properly get it to work is to use mod_rewrite in the primary vhost file to redirect to the wedding website vhost file (you can see that I have that in the primary vhost file, but it is commented out for purposes of this question). This doesn't seem proper to me? Should I get another IP and do IP vhosts instead of name-based vhosts?

When I execute apachectl -S, I get the following:

VirtualHost configuration:
wildcard NameVirtualHosts and _default_ servers:
*:80                   is a NameVirtualHost
         default server afewguyscoding.com (/etc/apache2/sites-enabled/afewguyscoding.com:1)
         port 80 namevhost afewguyscoding.com (/etc/apache2/sites-enabled/afewguyscoding.com:1)
         port 80 namevhost blog.afewguyscoding.com (/etc/apache2/sites-enabled/afewguyscoding.com:69)
         port 80 namevhost davidheartsrachel.com (/etc/apache2/sites-enabled/davidheartsrachel.com:1)
Syntax OK

I notice that afewguyscoding.com is the default site - however, doesn't it have to do a full string match to determine the proper site?

In my /etc/hosts file, I have this:

127.0.0.1 localhost
72.14.183.14 www.afewguyscoding.com plato
#72.14.183.14 davidstites.com plato
#72.14.183.14 5280software.com plato
#72.14.183.14 milehigh-software.com plato
#72.14.183.14 milehighsoftware.org plato
#72.14.183.14 rachelanddavid.net plato
#72.14.183.14 rachelanddavidstites.com plato
#72.14.183.14 rachelanddavidwedding.com plato
72.14.183.14 www.davidheartsrachel.com plato
# The following lines are desirable for IPv6 capable hosts
::1 ip6-localhost ip6-loopback
fe00::0 ip6-localnet
ff00::0 ip6-mcastprefix
ff02::1 ip6-allnodes
ff02::2 ip6-allrouters
ff02::3 ip6-allhosts

When I run hostname and hostname -f, I get the following (respectively):

# hostname
plato
# hostname -f
www.afewguyscoding.com

Primary site's vhost file

 <virtualhost *:80="">ServerAdmin david.stites@afewguyscoding.com
  ServerName afewguyscoding.com
  ServerAlias davidstites.com, 5280software.com, milehigh-software.com, milehighsoftware.org
  ServerAlias www.5280software.com, www.milehigh-software.com, www.milehighsoftware.org, www.davidstites.com, www.afewguyscoding.com

  # this tells rails that it will run in production mode
  # this is for rails < 3.x
  RailsEnv production

  DocumentRoot /var/www/afewguyscoding/current/public
  DirectoryIndex index.html

  # custom log file locations
  # possible values include: debug, info, notice, warn, error, crit,
  # alert, emerg.
  LogLevel alert
  ErrorLog  /var/www/afewguyscoding/current/log/error.log
  CustomLog /var/www/afewguyscoding/current/log/access.log combined

  # allows compression of text based mime.types
  AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/html text/plain text/xml text/javascript text/css application/x-javascript
  BrowserMatch ^Mozilla/4 gzip-only-text/html
  BrowserMatch ^Mozilla/4\.0[678] no-gzip
  BrowserMatch \bMSIE !no-gzip !gzip-only-text/html

  FileETag None

  <directory var="" www="" afewguyscoding="" current="" public="">Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews
    AllowOverride All
    Order allow,deny
    allow from all</directory> 

  <location blog="">PassengerEnabled off</location></virtualhost> 

 <virtualhost *:80="">ServerAdmin info@afewguyscoding.com
  ServerName blog.afewguyscoding.com

  DocumentRoot /var/www/wpress
  DirectoryIndex index.php

  <directory var="" www="" wpress="" current="" public="">Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews
    AllowOverride All
    Order allow,deny
    allow from all</directory></virtualhost> 

Wedding site's vhost file

 <virtualhost *:80="">ServerAdmin info@davidheartsrachel.com
  ServerName davidheartsrachel.com
  ServerAlias rachelanddavid.net, rachelanddavidstites.com, rachelanddavidwedding.com
  ServerAlias www.davidheartsrachel.com, www.rachelanddavidstites.com, www.rachelanddavidwedding.com, www.rachelanddavid.net

  # this tells rails that it will run in production mode
  # this is for rails < 3.x
  RailsEnv production
  # this is for rails >= 3.x
  RackEnv production

  DocumentRoot /var/www/davidheartsrachel/current/public
  DirectoryIndex index.html

  # Custom log file locations
  # Possible values include: debug, info, notice, warn, error, crit, alert and emerg,
  LogLevel alert
  ErrorLog  /var/www/davidheartsrachel/current/log/error.log
  CustomLog /var/www/davidheartsrachel/current/log/access.log combined

  # Allows compression of text based mime types
  AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/html text/plain text/xml text/javascript text/css application/x-javascript
  BrowserMatch ^Mozilla/4 gzip-only-text/html
  BrowserMatch ^Mozilla/4\.0[678] no-gzip
  BrowserMatch \bMSIE !no-gzip !gzip-only-text/html

  FileETag None

  <directory var="" www="" davidheartsrachel="" current="" public="">Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews
    AllowOverride All
    Order allow,deny
    Allow from All</directory></virtualhost> 

If you can think of any more information that might be helpful, please, ask me to post it.

Edit:

Let me try to clear this up. In the most essential form, my question is: why does going to davidheartsrachel.com takes you to www.afewguyscoding.com and davidheartsrachel.com takes you to davidheartsrachel.com based on my configuration above

Edit 2:

Here is my apache2.conf file:

#

ServerRoot "/etc/apache2"

# <ifmodule !mpm_winnt.c=""># <ifmodule !mpm_netware.c="">LockFile /var/lock/apache2/accept.lock
#</ifmodule>
#</ifmodule>

PidFile ${APACHE_PID_FILE}

Timeout 300

KeepAlive On

MaxKeepAliveRequests 100

KeepAliveTimeout 15

 <ifmodule mpm_prefork_module="">StartServers          5
    MinSpareServers       5
    MaxSpareServers      10
    MaxClients          150
    MaxRequestsPerChild   0</ifmodule> 

 <ifmodule mpm_worker_module="">StartServers          2
    MinSpareThreads      25
    MaxSpareThreads      75
    ThreadLimit          64
    ThreadsPerChild      25
    MaxClients          150
    MaxRequestsPerChild   0</ifmodule> 

 <ifmodule mpm_event_module="">StartServers          2
    MaxClients          150
    MinSpareThreads      25
    MaxSpareThreads      75
    ThreadLimit          64
    ThreadsPerChild      25
    MaxRequestsPerChild   0</ifmodule> 

# These need to be set in /etc/apache2/envvars
User ${APACHE_RUN_USER}
Group ${APACHE_RUN_GROUP}

 <files ~="" "^\.ht"="">Order allow,deny
    Deny from all</files> 

DefaultType text/plain

HostnameLookups Off

ErrorLog /var/log/apache2/error.log

LogLevel warn

# Include module configuration:
Include /etc/apache2/mods-enabled/*.load
Include /etc/apache2/mods-enabled/*.conf

# Include all the user configurations:
Include /etc/apache2/httpd.conf

# Include ports listing
Include /etc/apache2/ports.conf

LogFormat "%v:%p %h %l %u %t \"%r\" %>s %O \"%{Referer}i\" \"%{User-Agent}i\"" vhost_combined
LogFormat "%h %l %u %t \"%r\" %>s %O \"%{Referer}i\" \"%{User-Agent}i\"" combined
LogFormat "%h %l %u %t \"%r\" %>s %O" common
LogFormat "%{Referer}i -> %U" referer
LogFormat "%{User-agent}i" agent

CustomLog /var/log/apache2/other_vhosts_access.log vhost_combined

Include /etc/apache2/conf.d/

Include /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/

#ServerName afewguyscoding.com
LoadModule passenger_module /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/passenger-2.2.9/ext/apache2/mod_passenger.so
PassengerRoot /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/passenger-2.2.9
PassengerRuby /usr/bin/ruby1.8
PassengerDefaultUser www-data

I am fairly sure that my DNS is configured properly. Here are my zone files.

; afewguyscoding.com [73015]
$TTL 86400
@    IN  SOA ns1.linode.com. david\.stites.afewguyscoding.com. 2011062863 14400 14400 1209600 86400
@        NS  ns1.linode.com.
@        NS  ns2.linode.com.
@        NS  ns3.linode.com.
@        NS  ns4.linode.com.
@        NS  ns5.linode.com.
@            MX  10  ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM.
@            MX  20  ALT1.ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM.
@            MX  20  ALT2.ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM.
@            MX  30  ASPMX2.GOOGLEMAIL.COM.
@            MX  30  ASPMX3.GOOGLEMAIL.COM.
@            MX  30  ASPMX4.GOOGLEMAIL.COM.
@            MX  30  ASPMX5.GOOGLEMAIL.COM.
@            A   72.14.183.14
blog            A   72.14.183.14
clients            A   72.14.183.14
coupious            A   72.14.183.14
lbbs            A   72.14.183.14
staging            A   72.14.183.14
www            A   72.14.183.14
webmail            CNAME   ghs.google.com.

; davidheartsrachel.com [200479]
$TTL 86400
@    IN  SOA ns1.linode.com. david\.stites.afewguyscoding.com. 2011062862 14400 14400 1209600 86400
@        NS  ns1.linode.com.
@        NS  ns2.linode.com.
@        NS  ns3.linode.com.
@        NS  ns4.linode.com.
@        NS  ns5.linode.com.
@            MX  10  ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM.
@            MX  20  ALT1.ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM.
@            MX  20  ALT2.ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM.
@            MX  30  ASPMX2.GOOGLEMAIL.COM.
@            MX  30  ASPMX3.GOOGLEMAIL.COM.
@            MX  30  ASPMX4.GOOGLEMAIL.COM.
@            MX  30  ASPMX5.GOOGLEMAIL.COM.
@            A   72.14.183.14
blog            A   72.14.183.14
staging            A   72.14.183.14
www            A   72.14.183.14
webmail            CNAME   ghs.google.com.

One thing to note is that I have not tried using nginx instead of Apache to see if I get the same behavior.