<Proxy *>

     Order deny,allow


	
next line was Deny from all

     Allow from all

  </Proxy>

<VirtualHost *>


	
Set the domain

    ServerName mydomain.tld
	
Set domain aliases

    ServerAlias www.mydomain.tld 

    ServerAlias web.mydomain.tld


	
Set the DocumentRoot, this is where apache will look for static files
	
This is the public directory of your rails application
	
As previously stated, my app is deployed with Capistrano, so I set DocumentRoot to the current/public directory

    DocumentRoot /var/www/mydomain.tld/current/public/


	
Set where you want apache put its logs
	
note I use deflate as log format, this is because I use mod_deflate to compress all outputs

    CustomLog /var/www/mydomain.tld/logs/access.log deflate

    ErrorLog /var/www/mydomain.tld/logs/error.log


	
if you want to have server-wide statistics,
	
you can also tell apache to log in a common file shared by all your domains 

    CustomLog /var/log/apache2/access.log deflate

    ErrorLog /var/log/apache2/error.log


	
I use utf-8 for all my projects, so I force apache to send the good charset by default.
	
This is needed if you use page caching and want apache serves these with the good charset.

    AddDefaultCharset utf-8


	
Allow limited access to your public directory
	
dont allow user to list directories
	
allow apache to FollowSymlinks

    <Directory /var/www/mydomain.tld/current/public/>

      Options -Indexes FollowSymLinks

AllowOverride All
Order allow,deny
Allow from all
</Directory>

	
Be sure mod_rewrite is activated for you vhost

    RewriteEngine On


	
If you use applications which resides in cgi-bin, like awstats
	
the following mod_rewrite RewriteRule will allow apache to know it should not proxy these request and the PT switch will allow the ScriptAlias directive to work

    RewriteRule "^/cgi-bin/." "$0" [QSA,PT,L]

    RewriteRule "^/awstatsicon/." "$0" [PT,L]


	
Set a ScriptAlias for /cgi-bin/ url
	
All url begining with /cgi-bin/ will be served from the specified cgi-bin deirectory

    ScriptAlias /cgi-bin/ /var/www/mydomain.tld/cgi-bin/  

    <Directory /var/www/mydomain.tld/cgi-bin/>

      AllowOverride All

      Options ExecCGI FollowSymLinks

      Order allow,deny

      Allow from all

    </Directory>


	
Do not allow open proxying, allow only requests starting with a /

   <LocationMatch "^[^/]">

      Deny from all

   </LocationMatch>


	
Avoid open you server to proxying

   ProxyRequests Off


	
Let apache correctly rewrite redirect

   ProxyPassReverse / http://localhost:8001/


	
Let apache pass the original host not the ProxyPass one

   ProxyPreserveHost On


	
As I mentioned earlier, Capistrano disable_web task allows you to disable your application
	
In fact it only create a simple page named maintenance.html in the directory public/system/ of your application
	
The following mod_rewrite rules will tell apache to directly serve the maintenance.html pages if it find it out.

   RewriteCond %{DOCUMENT_ROOT}/system/maintenance.html -f

   RewriteCond %{SCRIPT_FILENAME} !maintenance.html

   RewriteRule ^.*$ /system/maintenance.html [L]


	
For static files it's good to avoid hitting your mongrel process
	
so let apache knows it should serve it directly
	
for a rails application it means, files in images / stylesheets / javascripts

   RewriteRule "^/(images|stylesheets|javascripts)/?(.*)" "$0" [L]
	
Try to match a cached pages

   RewriteRule ([.]+)$ $1.html [QSA]
	
if the cached page does not exists

   RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
	
proxy requests to your mongrel instance

   RewriteRule "^/(.*)" "http://localhost:8001/$1" [P,QSA,L]

</VirtualHost>