Trying to install Drupal multisite on Localhost using XAMPP plus Windows XP. This is an extremely common forum topic that is not resolved in any of the posts. I've browsed the forums for weeks trying to find a solution, searched google, watched videos at popular blogs and youtube channels, etc. There is not a successful guide.
My setup:
I've used vHosts and hosts to create multiple localhost-only domains [for example, I have example_site.com mapped to 127.0.0.1 in hosts (c:/windows/system32/drivers/etc/hosts
)], and example_site.com is set, as follows, in my vHosts file (c:/xampp/apache/conf/extra/httpd-vhosts.conf by default):
<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerName example_sitename.com
DocumentRoot "C:/example_rootdirectory"
<Directory "C:/example_rootdirectory"> //same as one line above
Options +Indexes FollowSymlinks +ExecCGI
AllowOverride All
Order allow,deny
Allow from all
</Directory>
</VirtualHost>
This block in the vHosts file has been extremely successful for me. I have tested on four XP machines over the past several weeks, and it has worked on all of them, without a hick-up.