When you install Apache in a development environment and in most production environments it works out of the box (so long as you understand the basic configuration). However sometimes things can go wrong, and here's a solution to help you overcome VirtualHost Overlap on Port Errors.

If you're getting a warning like:

[warn] _default_ virtualhost overlap on port 80, the first has precedence

When you start Apache, then all you need to do is add the following line to your Apache configuration file (usually httpd.conf)

NameVirtualHost *:80

What this does is allows name based virtual hosts and will accept any connections on port 80 unless a VirtualHost directive overrides the value further down in the configuration.

It's a problem that trips up a lot of developers, luckily it's an easy fix :)

In contrast if you're getting an error like this one:

[warn] _default_ virtualhost overlap on port 443, the first has precedence

It's likely that you've tried to setup some virtual hosts to run over SSL, and you need to include the matching directive to allow name based virtual hosts over that port:

NameVirtualHost *:443

I got these tips from the blog at antbrown.com, read more about virtualhost overlap on port.