The Vitual Host directive identifies a host in the system. It should emcompass all the directives that are nessasary and allowed for a virtual host.

There are a few important notes about this directive. According to Apache's documentation it needs one of: However, since version 2.4, I've had problems with the wildcard. It goes to either the default host or the first host in the list. That doesn't happen when an IP address is used. Now I realize... it could be a configuration glitch on my system but it happens on all hosts that I use a wildcard on, not just one. So I would be more inclind to believe... maybe they weren't concentrating that hard on this one.

• an IP address for the interface to receive requests on,
• A fully qualified domain name which is not recommentd (probably because of DNS queries),
• a wildcard (*) to receive requests on any interface or
• the word _default_ which is an alias for wildcard.

The routing procedure is fist the IP address and if there are more than one of them... the ServerName. That makes the Server Name pretty important.