Introduction

Say you have a bunch of static HTML pages generated using Sphinx, Jekyll etc. Whenever the contents are updated, instead of having to copy them over to the ~/Sites directory, it might be a good idea to just create a symbolic link at ~/Sites and pointing it at the output directory of your Sphinx/Jekyll project directory.

The Steps

1. Edit <username>.conf under /private/etc/apache2/users to add FollowSymLinks directive:

    <Directory "/Users/<username>/Sites/">
        Options Indexes MultiViews FollowSymLinks
        AllowOverride None
        Order allow,deny
        Allow from all
    </Directory>
   

2. Edit httpd.conf under /private/etc/apache2 to uncomment the line under “# Virtual hosts”:

    # Virtual hosts
    Include /private/etc/apache2/extra/httpd-vhosts.conf
   

3. Edit httpd-vhosts.conf under /private/etc/apache2/extra to define the virtual directory:

    <VirtualHost *:80>
        DocumentRoot "/Users/<username>/Sites"
        ServerName localhost
    </VirtualHost>
   
    <VirtualHost *:80>
    	<Directory /Users/<username>/Sites/<sitename>
        	Options +FollowSymLinks +SymLinksIfOwnerMatch
        	AllowOverride All
    	</Directory>
    	DocumentRoot "/Users/<username>/Sites/<sitename>"
    </VirtualHost>
   

4. Create a symlink to the HTML pages directory generated by Sphinx or Jekyll.

    $ ln -s /path/to/generated/html/pages ~/Sites/<sitename>
   

5. Restart Apache.

6. The contents are now accessible via http://localhost/<sitename>.

7. Done.

Serving Jekyll Site with Built-in Apache Server

I have some difficulties serving static files from Jekyll on OS X built-in Apache server, which apparently isn’t as straightforward as creating a symlink to the _site directory. Some googling also didn’t turn up much information. KIV for now.

Reference

• How to allow access to a symbolic link in my ~/Sites/ for Apache under Mac OS X Lion 10.7.2 - Super User

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Published

Tags

• osx 4
• apache 3
• symlink 1

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