I can connect, but don't know how I should set network up

snydeopen

Hello and thanks for reading. I'm new to this and a lot of other things.

I have a Linux VM in the cloud (Apache, PHP, Node.js, mysql, et. al.) that has some web apps and content both public and (soon to be) private.
The people who need to use them can access them over the internet through a web browser and they are up and running fine.

For security, I want to limit access ideally to some - but not all - of the content. But If I have to serve the public content from another machine in the end, that's ok.

I have added OpenVPN as a server to the Linux VM that hosts the apps and I can connect to the VM from my windows openVPN client.
But when I say I can connect, that's all I mean. I can run the openVPN client and get a green icon that says I'm connected.

I want multiple clients to whom I grant access to be able to connect to the apache server on the VM through their web browser - using the same domain name they are using now if possible - over the VPN ONLY.

Can someone point me to some resources that will help me understand what it is that I want to do here?

Do I need to set up the openVPN server on a VM that is separate from the resources that I am trying to serve?

How do I force the browser on my client to connect over the VPN?

I just haven't wrapped my head around what I need to do and I'm new to networking.

Thanks for your help.

snydeopen

Clarification:

Ok, looks like all I really want to do is make it so that you can only access the web content hosted on the server (linux, apache) through the vpn.
No one needs access to anything that is not served to them through apache and a web browser.

I don't know the correct way to phrase this to find the resources I need when I search for answers.

Help? openvpn using TCP? On port 443? set local to the private ip of the server and have apache listen on 1194? wha? Any clue would be appreciated because I don't have one.

TinCanTech

Try http://10.8.0.1/index.html

10.8.0.1 is the server VPN IP, or what ever subnet you chose in your Openvpn server config file.

eg.

server 10.8.0.1 255.255.255.0

snydeopen

Thanks. That gets me to the apache default index. Now where can I find instructions on how to forward instead to a named virtual host that I have running on apache that is currently listening on port 443?

I have an apache virtual host catching everything non-SSL

<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerName example.com
Redirect permanent / https://example.com
</VirtualHost>

Then I catch it with an SSL VirtualHost

<IfModule mod_ssl.c>
<VirtualHost *:443>
ServerName example.com
BLAH BLAH BLAH HANDLE THE REQUEST
</VirtualHost>
</IfModule>

I no longer want the wildcard to work. I want only clients of my VPN to be able to access.

What should I be searching for to find instructions on how to accomplish this?

Thanks for your help.