Apache2 www1 instead of www

Assuming the VirtualHost tags are fine. It's probably because the ServerAlias isn't used if there is no ServerName present. Try it again after changing ServerAlias to ServerName in your second VirtualHost.

A good reminder is to set ServerName for the first name and use ServerAlias for any additional aliases.

Do note though if you are going to use another directory (outside of /var/www) that the permissions are set properly. Also if SELinux is used, the appropriate context needs to be set for that directory. But that's properly not an issue unless you enable SELinux yourself.

Clarification of few basic points:

• Within Ubuntu, /var/www is the default directory where the user's web content must be stored. This is defined into the global Apache's configuration file: /etc/apache2/apache2.conf, by the directives:

  <Directory /var/www/>
      Options Indexes FollowSymLinks
      AllowOverride None
      Require all granted
  </Directory>
  

• There is no direct link between the VirtualHost's name and its DocumentRoot directory name.

• The directive ServerName defines the general server's name or the name of certain VirtualHost when it is placed into its definition - between the <VirtualHost> tags.

• With a view of the effective VHs management, usually, the definition of each individual VirtualHost is placed in a separate configuration file.

• The directive ServerName is required for each VirtualHost.

• The directive ServerAlias is not required. We can think about it as place, where we can type one or more synonyms of ServerName.

According to these points, my suggestion is next:

• Create two separate directories located in /var/www, as the example from the question they could be:

  sudo mkdir -p /var/www/www.name.com/public_html
  sudo mkdir -p /var/www/www1.name.com/public_html
  

• Create configuration file for the first VirtualHost:

  sudo nano /etc/apache2/sites-available/www.name.com.conf
  

  Its content should be something as:

  <VirtualHost *:80>
      ServerName www.name.com
      ServerAlias name.com 
      ServerAdmin [email protected]
      DocumentRoot /var/www/www.name.com/public_html
      <Directory /var/www/www.name.com/public_html>
          Options None FollowSymLinks
          # Enable .htaccess Overrides:
          AllowOverride All
          DirectoryIndex index.html index.php
          Order allow,deny
          Allow from all
          Require all granted
      </Directory>
  </VirtualHost>
  

• Create configuration file for the second VirtualHost:

  sudo nano /etc/apache2/sites-available/www1.name.com.conf
  

  Its content should be something as:

  <VirtualHost *:80>
      ServerName www1.name.com
      ServerAdmin [email protected]
      DocumentRoot /var/www/www1.name.com/public_html
      <Directory /var/www/www1.name.com/public_html>
          Options None FollowSymLinks
          # Enable .htaccess Overrides:
          AllowOverride All
          DirectoryIndex index.html index.php
          Order allow,deny
          Allow from all
          Require all granted            
      </Directory>
  </VirtualHost>
  

• Disable all existing VirtualHost's configurations, if it is needed: sudo a2dissite "*.conf".

• Enable the new configuration files:

  sudo a2ensite www.name.com.conf www1.name.com.conf
  

• Restart Apache:

  • Ubuntu 14.04: sudo service apache2 restart

  • Ubuntu 16.04: sudo systemctl restart apache2.service

• Put some index.html pages into public_html/ folders and try to access the two domains (http://www... and http://www1...) through the browser.