How to specify different php.ini files for each website in Apache

Many times you might feel that you require a different settings for different sites (running on the same server) as specified in php.ini . So you start making changes in your php files using ini_set() or .htaccess to override those settings. In this howto, I will tell you how to solve this problem of having different php settings by having separate php.ini files for each website.

So, lets assume that I have a website with document root as /var/www/html/example/ with domain as www.example.com. For testing purpose you can create a small file in /var/www/html/example/phpinfo.php

<?php
phpinfo();
?>

Now run http://example.com/phpinfo.php it will display current php settings.

Now copy the php.ini file from /etc/php.ini file to your /var/www/html/example.

[root]# cp /etc/php.ini /var/www/html/example #For fedora users

[chia]$ sudo cp /etc/php5/apache2/php.ini /var/www/example # for Debian and Ubuntu

And now, we just need a simple trick to tell apache where to find the php settings for this website. You need to make this small change in the configuration file.

<VirtualHost 10.24.11.2:80>

ServerName example.com

ServerAlias www.example.com

PHPINIDir /var/www/html/example

</VirtualHost>

PHPINIDir should be the directory where the file php.ini resides.

Restart the apache after this

[root]# service httpd restart  # for Fedora/Redhat/CenOS based systems

[chia]$ sudo apache2 restart  # for Debian/Ubuntu based systems