Why does http://localhost redirect to my default virtual host once I setup virtual hosts in Apache?

Question

This is probably an easy question, but I want to understand better how Apache works with virtual hosts. I am setting up virtual hosts because I work on multiple websites at once and I don't want to use subdirectories. I was pretty much using the default Apache httpd.conf file with the DocumentRoot pointing to something like "/www". I uncommented the virtual hosts include and added the following:

NameVirtualHost *:80

<VirtualHost *:80>
    ServerName site1.dev
    DocumentRoot /www/site1
</VirtualHost>

<VirtualHost *:80>
    ServerName site2.dev
    DocumentRoot /www/site2
</VirtualHost>

Now when I go to http://localhost I get the default page for site1.

I'm sure there is a reason why this makes sense, but I don't quite understand it. I would've thought that only requests that were explicitly to http://site1.test would get routed through that directive and it wouldn't just become the default. Can someone explain why it becomes the default.

Answer 1

http://httpd.apache.org/docs/1.3/vhosts/name-based.html

(Should be true for 2.x also)

"If no matching virtual host is found, then the first listed virtual host that matches the IP address will be used.

As a consequence, the first listed virtual host is the default virtual host. The DocumentRoot from the main server will never be used when an IP address matches the NameVirtualHost directive. If you would like to have a special configuration for requests that do not match any particular virtual host, simply put that configuration in a container and list it first in the configuration file."