The Apache and Nginx configuration files

Let's switch to the default directory where Apache holds the configuration files for the available websites, using the command line: $ cd /etc/apache2/sites-available/. After that, perform the following set of steps:

If you open a browser and type http://www.learning-phalcon.localhost/, you'll receive a host not found or connection error. This is because there is no name resolver for this TLD (short for Top Level Domain). To fix this, we edit our host file and add this name:

$ echo "127.0.0.1 learning-phalcon.localhost www.learning-phalcon.localhost" | sudo tee /etc/hosts

Restart your browser and type the address http://www.learning-phalcon.localhost/ again. If everything goes well, you should see the current date/time.

If you choose to use Nginx (which I recommend, especially because it can serve more concurrent clients with higher throughput, and it serves static content more efficiently) instead of Apache, here is what you need to do:

Locate the config folder of Nginx (in Ubuntu, it is installed under /etc/nginx/). Create a file named learning-phalcon.localhost in your sites-available folder (by navigating to /etc/nginx/sites-available):

$ cd /etc/nginx/sites-available
$ vim learning-phalcon.localhost

Now, add the following content to it:

server {
    listen 80;
    server_name learning-phalcon.localhost;

    index index.php;
    set $root_path "/var/www/learning-phalcon.localhost/public";
    root $root_path;

    client_max_body_size 10M;

    try_files $uri $uri/ @rewrite;

    location @rewrite {
        rewrite ^/(.*)$ /index.php?_url=/$1;
    }

    location ~ \.php {
        fastcgi_index /index.php;
        fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php5-fpm.sock;
        fastcgi_intercept_errors on;
        include fastcgi_params;

        fastcgi_split_path_info ^(.+\.php)(/.*)$;

        fastcgi_param PATH_INFO $fastcgi_path_info;
        fastcgi_param PATH_TRANSLATED $document_root$fastcgi_path_info;
        fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
        fastcgi_param DOCUMENT_ROOT $realpath_root;
        fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $realpath_root/index.php;
    }

    location ~* ^/(css|img|js|flv|swf|download)/(.+)$ {
        root $root_path;
    }

    location ~ /\.ht {
        deny all;
    }
}

Then, save the file and restart Nginx:

$ sudo service nginx restart

Please edit and save your host file (check The host file section), then open your browser and type http://www.learning-phalcon.localhost/. At this point, you should see a page that shows the current date/time.

There are many possible methods to install and configure PHP and Apache/Nginx. Feel free to do a simple Google search and choose one that fits you better, if my method is not the optimal one for your needs.

Assuming that everything went well until now, we will go further by learning a little bit about Phalcon's internals.