Making domain-name only accessible web server with apache2

Question

I have a domain name example.com and a VPS with a static IP address 123.123.123.123.
I want the browsers to provide the domain name to access the website content.

In pratice I want people see my website only if they put exemple.com and not 123.123.123.123 on their browser's url bar.

So in my /var/www/ directory I made two subdirectories.
/var/www/default (for the content that those who do not provide the dn will see) and
/var/www/exemple for the actual website content.
I edited my /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/000-default.conf file like this.

<VirtualHost *:80>
    DocumentRoot /var/www/default
</VirtualHost>

<VirtualHost *:80>
    ServerName example.com
    ServerAlias example.com

    ServerAdmin webmaster@localhost
    DocumentRoot /var/www/exemple

    ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/error.log
    CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/access.log combined
</VirtualHost>

In my mind this should work. In pratice the server gives me the content of /var/www/default both if i put 123.123.123.123 and exemple.com in my browser's url bar. Why?

Answer 1

Apache will direct traffic to the first matching VirtualHost which it sees in the configuration. Because the first one defined does not define a ServerName or ServerAlias, it's configured to catch any traffic to any bound hostname or any bound IP address on port 80.

Answer 2

You forgot to name the VirtualHost dedicated to example.com. Here are my modifications (with some added suggestions):

<VirtualHost *:80>
    DocumentRoot /var/www/default
</VirtualHost>

<VirtualHost 123.123.123.123:80>                              # <= Should fix your issue
    ServerName example.com
    ServerAlias www.example.com                               # <= Suggested modification

    ServerAdmin webmaster@localhost
    DocumentRoot /var/www/exemple

    ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/error-example.log              # <= Suggested modification
    CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/access-example.log combined   # <= Suggested modification
</VirtualHost>

Of course, don't forget to reload Apache.