Can I view my locally hosted site on a phone?

  • I’m about to start building a retail site. It’s hosted on my laptop, just so I can put off paying a hosting fee until I really have to. Is there a way to view it on my Android phone while it’s still hosted on my laptop? I installed it with WebMatrix. I suppose asking a phone to run SQL and WebMatrix is a bit much! But can I persuade the Android browser to pretend that my laptop is the internet?

Viewing 2 replies - 1 through 2 (of 2 total)
  • Thread Starter Nick H.

    (@nick-h)

    Hang on, maybe I’ve missed the point. The site has a url – so can any web browser visit it? (Assuming my laptop is powered on and WebMatrix is loaded.)

    My brain hurts.

    Hi Nick,
    There are a ton of ways to do this, so feel good about that :-).

    The easiest requires a WiFi router and it’s to use your network IP (which is probably something like 192.168.1.n) when installing WordPress, and then accessing that same address from your Android Phone while it’s on WiFi. Make sense? In short:

    1. Install the WP code
    2. When you go to do the database installation, instead of accessing your code at https://localhost/, access it at, e.g., https://192.168.1.5/ (using your IP that your wifi router gave you, of course, and adding the path to the URL, e.g. /wordpress/)
    3. On your phone, with WiFi enabled, go to that same address, e.g. https://192.168.1.5/wordpress/
    4. Dance around the room

    If that option isn’t possible for you, I’ve got a whole bunch up my sleeve. Best of luck!

Viewing 2 replies - 1 through 2 (of 2 total)
  • The topic ‘Can I view my locally hosted site on a phone?’ is closed to new replies.