Scenario

assuming you want to add your site, located in D:\Websites\Samplesite to be its own virtual host so that when you run XAMPP you can view your Samplesite with this url http://samplesite.local.
this tutorial assumes you have installed XAMPP in the default directory i.e. C:\xampp.

Solution

step1

in open hosts. under 127.0.0.1 localhost paste these :
127.0.0.1 samplesite.local 127.0.0.1 www.samplesite.local

step2

in
open httpd-vhosts.conf and paste this right at the bottom of the file:
NameVirtualHost *:80 <virtualhost *:80> ServerAdmin admin@localhost DocumentRoot "C:\xampp\htdocs" ServerName localhost </virtualhost>

this turns on virtual hosts and retains xampp’s original admin interface.

step3

to specify your own virtual host, simply paste the following and change DocumentRoot, ServerName, ServerAlias and <directory "location"> to setup your virtual url.

<virtualhost *:80> ServerAdmin admin@localhost DocumentRoot “D:\Websites\Samplesite” //change this ServerName www.samplesite.local //change this ServerAlias samplesite.local //change this <directory "D:\Websites\Samplesite"> //change this AllowOverride FileInfo AuthConfig Limit Indexes Options MultiViews Indexes SymLinksIfOwnerMatch IncludesNoExec <limit GET POST OPTIONS> Order allow,deny Allow from all </limit> <limitexcept GET POST OPTIONS> Order deny,allow Deny from all </limitexcept> </directory> </virtualhost>