Access from Another Device

The following instructions are for browsing your DevKinsta-created site on another device on the same network.

Important notes:                           

• This tutorial includes advanced topics, including editing firewall rules and configuration. If you’re not comfortable making these changes or have any trouble loading your local site, we recommend working with a developer or IT professional to set this up.
• All involved devices must be connected to the same private network.
• For mobile devices, this will only work on one site at a time.
• Network Firewall exceptions for the HTTP/HTTPS ports (usually 80/443) may need to be made on the host machine.

Find the Host Device’s Network IP Address

You can find the host device’s IP address using several methods.

Opening this IP address in your browser on any device on the network should load an Nginx “404 Not Found” page.

If the site doesn’t load, there is likely a firewall blocking access to HTTP/HTTPS. In this case, new firewall rules will need to be added to open the ports. Here are links to instructions on doing that in Windows, macOS, and Ubuntu:

• How To Open a Port in Windows Firewall
• Set firewall access for services and apps (macOS)
• Enable or block firewall access (Ubuntu)

Option 1: Desktops and Routers

Accessing your DevKinsta sites from another desktop/laptop requires you to map your hostnames to the network IP address found during the previous step. For example, if the hostname of one of your sites is mysite.local then you will need to edit your hosts file to point that hostname to the correct IP address:

192.168.1.7 mysite.local

For more details on editing your hosts file, see one of the following guides:

• How to Edit Hosts File on Windows
• How to Edit Hosts File on Mac

You can point more than one hostname to your DevKinsta host IP when using this option.

Depending on its capabilities/settings, you can also edit the hosts on your network router to allow all devices to map hostnames correctly.

Option 2: Mobile Devices

If you are unable to edit your device/router’s host settings, you will need to access your DevKinsta site using the host device’s IP address.

1. Decide which site you would like to access, then open its Nginx .conf file (sitename.conf) in ~/DevKinsta/nginx_sites
2. Add localhost to the server_name line:
server_name localhost wordpress.local *.wordpress.local;
3. After saving the conf file, restart the devkinsta_nginx container either through Docker Desktop or using the command line:
docker container restart devkinsta_nginx

You should now be able to access your locally hosted site from a mobile device on the same network by using the DevKinsta host’s IP address. If you want to point to a different site, remove localhost from the .conf file you added it to, and add it to the different site’s .conf file using the steps above.

Update wp-config.php to Allow Normal Navigation Using the IP Address

Once the page is loaded, you may notice broken stylesheets/assets or non-working links. This is due to accessing the site with the IP address instead of the .local domain. A quick way to get around this is by adding the following snippet in your site’s wp-config.php file above the “That’s all, stop editing” line:

define( 'WP_HOME', 'https://'.$_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'] );
define( 'WP_SITEURL', 'https://'.$_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'] );

In each value, you can replace https with http if needed, depending on how your local development environment is configured. Remember that if you try to access the IP Address using HTTPS, the site will show as insecure.

Now your site’s stylesheets/assets and links should work as expected when viewing the site on a mobile device on the same network.