Change Apache2 ports.conf in order to localhost interface to listen to port 80

Question

At the moment I have this config in /etc/apache2/ports.conf:

NameVirtualHost *:80
Listen 80

All works fine, but I want to change it to:

NameVirtualHost 127.0.0.1:80
Listen 127.0.0.1:80

However after restarting apache, it displays the following error message:

[warn] NameVirtualHost 127.0.0.1:80 has no VirtualHosts

So I've updated the website VirtualHost file under /etc/apache2/sites-available/foo.com:

Original:

<VirtualHost *:80>
...
</VirtualHost>

Updated:

<VirtualHost 127.0.0.1:80>
...
</VirtualHost>

But after restarting apache, it shows the default apache2 index.html that is in /var/www instead of the project under /var/www/foo

This is the only enabled VirtualHost on the server.

Also here is my /etc/hosts file:

127.0.0.1   localhost
127.0.1.1   debian
<publicIP>  <foo.com> <serverhostname>

The host OS is Debian 7.

Any suggestions?

Solution

Have you symlinked the /etc/apache2/sites-available/foo.com to /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/000-foo.com.

The default apache configuration only reads virtual hosts from the sites-enabled directory and not sites available.

I am guessing that if you go to /etc/apache2/sites-enabled and type ls -la you will only see a configuration for default site and not your new site. If this is the case then symlink your foo.com into the sites enabled directory as follows ln -s ../sites-available/foo.com 001-foo.com