where should i define my virtual hosts? conf/httpd.conf or conf.d/user.conf

Question

i have seen more than one tutorial that i have been using trying to get suPHP running on my centos 6.5 box.

first off, standard lamp virtual hosts tutorials always add virtual hosts into /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf however, a different tutorial that i was looking at (http://invision-web.net/web/install-configure-apache-php-suphp-virtual-hosts-centos/) puts the virtual hosts into /etc/httpd/conf.d/user.conf

is there a right or wrong way to do this? is one better than another?

also, i understand that httpd.conf is the main apache config file, but what exactly is the user.conf file?

Answer 1

The virtual host configurations should normally go in main Apache configuration file httpd.conf. In the article link you posted above the configuration

creates a virtual host for user invision on domains n1.invision-web.net and www.invision-web.net

. Unless you have multiple site users which require configuration at a per-user level, this is not necessary. The article does not make this clear at all.

user.conf is for per-user configuration. For example, where sites have multiple users (e.g. access to http://www.mysite.com/~pedro (delivering content from the home directory or sub-directory of user pedro) can be configured in the users.conf file. More details in Apache docs.