Ports and the Listen Directive

The Listen directive tells Apache which network ports to bind to. Without it, Apache would not accept any connections.

Standard Ports

• Port 80 is the default for plain HTTP.
• Port 443 is the default for HTTPS (encrypted).

Basic Usage

Listen 80
Listen 443

On Debian this lives in /etc/apache2/ports.conf. On Red Hat it is in httpd.conf.

Listen on a Specific Address

You can bind to one IP address instead of all of them:

Listen 192.168.1.10:80

Custom Ports

You can run Apache on any free port, useful for testing:

Listen 8080

A virtual host must match the port it serves:

<VirtualHost *:8080>
    ServerName test.local
    DocumentRoot /var/www/test
</VirtualHost>

Check What Is Listening

sudo ss -tlnp | grep apache

After changing ports, reload Apache and make sure your firewall allows the new port.