Apache - Configure hundreds of similar sites without specifying each one

It's super easy with nginx:

location / { root /var/www/$host; } 

Plus nginx is blazingly fast. If you wish to stick to Apache though, you ought to read this: https://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.4/vhosts/mass.html

Yes there are security and other concerns. Is better to have one virtualhost per site with separate logging and separate SSL certificates etc.

If they are different sites is better to have they separated because:

• Is easier to set a log file for each one
• Is easier to configure the SSL certificates for HTTPS if they use different domains.
• Remember that the users can modify the $host header easy so if someday you create the directory: /var/www/site1.domain.com-backup or /var/www/secret-logs they can be accessed.
• Monitoring per site.
• If someday you need special configuration for some site, set a basic auth, change some parameter etc. you can with different virtualhosts. With all of them mixed would be difficult and dirty.

Is better to auto-generate them. You can use many templating tools from a simple bash script which accepts some parameters on envvars to more complex tools like SaltStack / Ansible.

Here a simple bash script to do it, it should be adapted to your needs:

#!/bin/bash cat << EOF > /etc/nginx/sites-available/$SERVER_NAME.conf server { listen 80; server_name $SERVER_NAME $ADDITIONAL_SERVER_NAMES; access_log /var/log/nginx/$SERVER_NAME-access.log; error_log /var/log/nginx/$SEVER_NAME-error.log; location / { root /var/www/$SERVER_NAME; } } EOF # Enable config on nginx ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/$SERVER_NAME.conf /etc/nginx/sites-enabled # Test configration and apply if no errors nginx -t && service nginx reload 

To execute the script name it nginx-site-generator, give execution permissions and:

 SERVER_NAME=site1.com ADDITIONAL_SERVER_NAMES=www.site1.com ./nginx-site-generator