A “virtual host” looks like an entire website to the outside world, but really it is handled by a webserver that is (typically) handling many such virtual hosts at once.
Many commercial web hosting providers do not provide you with an actual machine—rather, they set your site up as one virtual host out of many running on a high performance server.
VirtualHost is also a directive used by the Apache web server (and perhaps others) to set up a virtual host.
Other resources
- What is a virtual host? – a definition from webopedia
- Virtual hosting – Wikipedia
- Apache Virtual Host documentation
category: Glossary
A “virtual host” looks like an entire website to the outside world, but really it is handled by a webserver that is (typically) handling many such virtual hosts at once.
Many commercial web hosting providers do not provide you with an actual machine—rather, they set your site up as one virtual host out of many running on a high performance server.
VirtualHost is also a directive used by the Apache web server (and perhaps others) to set up a virtual host.
Other resources
- What is a virtual host? – a definition from webopedia
- Virtual hosting – Wikipedia
- Apache Virtual Host documentation
category: Glossary