How to reload apache configuration for a site without restarting apache?

Question

It should be possible using the command

sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 reload

I hope that helps.

Another way would be:

sudo service apache2 reload

Do

apachectl -k graceful

Check this link for more information : http://www.electrictoolbox.com/article/apache/restart-apache/

Updated for Apache 2.4, for non-systemd (e.g., CentOS 6.x, Amazon Linux AMI) and for systemd (e.g., CentOS 7.x):

There are two ways of having the apache process reload the configuration, depending on what you want done with its current threads, either advise to exit when idle, or killing them directly.

Note that Apache recommends using apachectl -k as the command, and for systemd, the command is replaced by httpd -k

apachectl -k graceful or httpd -k graceful

Apache will advise its threads to exit when idle, and then apache reloads the configuration (it doesn't exit itself), this means statistics are not reset.

apachectl -k restart or httpd -k restart

This is similar to stop, in that the process kills off its threads, but then the process reloads the configuration file, rather than killing itself.

Source: https://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.4/stopping.html

If you are using Ubuntu server, you can use systemctl

systemctl reload apache2

Late answer here, but if you search /etc/init.d/apache2 for 'reload', you'll find something like this:

do_reload() {
        if apache_conftest; then
                if ! pidofproc -p $PIDFILE "$DAEMON" > /dev/null 2>&1 ; then
                        APACHE2_INIT_MESSAGE="Apache2 is not running"
                        return 2
                fi
                $APACHE2CTL graceful > /dev/null 2>&1
                return $?
        else
                APACHE2_INIT_MESSAGE="The apache2$DIR_SUFFIX configtest failed. Not doing anything."
                return 2
        fi
}

Basically, what the answers that suggest using init.d, systemctl, etc are invoking is a thin wrapper that says:

• check the apache config
• if it's good, run apachectl graceful (swallowing the output, and forwarding the exit code)

This suggests that @Aruman's answer is also correct, provided you are confident there are no errors in your configuration or have already run apachctl configtest manually.

The apache documentation also supplies the same command for a graceful restart (apachectl -k graceful), and some more color on the behavior thereof.