Developing locally, showing the client through the web

I'm trying to figure out the best way to show my clients the work I've done for them without having to setup other environments on production servers, etc.

⠀Is there a good way to expose my local development environment to the web for them to view?
⠀Are there other "best practices" for this?

dcolumbus

Posted 2014-01-11T01:06:09.450

Reputation: 193

Is your development server visible from outside world? If yes, then just give the IP address with the specific file/folder that you wanted to show off. – Darius – 2014-01-11T01:15:16.650

No, it's not... – dcolumbus – 2014-01-11T01:15:54.023

If you have a main website, simply create another folder that has no clickable link to it, and push your work from the dev server to the main site. So for example www.mysite.com/client1/ (and give that URL to your client) – Darius – 2014-01-11T01:17:02.453

There is no best practice, you just need to put the site on a public IP. What can you tell us about the site - is it server side, php, or static html? – Paul – 2014-01-11T01:24:17.630

Answers

I switched to developing with Local by Flywheel. It works well for my current flow.

dcolumbus

Posted 2014-01-11T01:06:09.450

Reputation: 193

I'll start by assuming the following:

You have a web server running on the development system (not just static HTML on a local file system).
- That web server is listening on an external interface (vs. loopback only).
There is a public-facing Apache web server that you can configure.
- That public-facing web server is able to establish a TCP connection with your development system.

If all of the above are true (or if you can make them true), you should be able to use a reverse proxy.

To avoid URL rewriting, I usually set up a DNS record pointing to the public web server with a unique name (dev.example.com), then set up a virtual hosted reverse proxy. Here's a minimal Apache config for dev.example.com pointing to an internal development system with the IP address of 10.0.0.42:

<VirtualHost *:80>
    ServerAdmin me@example.com

    ServerName dev.example.com
    ServerAlias dev

    DefaultType none

    ProxyPass / http://10.0.0.42/
    ProxyPassReverse / http://10.0.0.42/
</VirtualHost>

You'll need to make sure mod_proxy is enabled. Refer to Apache's mod_proxy documentation for more details.

Woody

Posted 2014-01-11T01:06:09.450

Reputation: 31

Simplest thing would be to put your system behind a firewall and a proxy and better still put it in a virtual machine. Then port forward only the port your server is listening on.

Gaurav Joseph

Posted 2014-01-11T01:06:09.450

Reputation: 1 503

You will also (in addition to your local http server) need either a static IP or a dynamic IP with a service to update NSF as your IP changes. And you will need to have a domain name pointed to your IP. And so you will need a name server pair, or rent-a name server. It's actually a pretty complex problem you're asking about, especially if you start to factor in https or the like. Much easier rent a host and get that set up to serve I think.

Elliptical view

Posted 2014-01-11T01:06:09.450

Reputation: 864