Can I use Local to turn my computer into a Server? (Custom domain)

[ofmarconi]

Issue Summary

I would like to know if I can use Local to store my sites and publish with custom domains instead of NGROK.IO.

As for the speed of the sites, is there any way to unlock any limits? I downloaded the site to try an instant Wordpress, isn’t it possible?

Troubleshooting Questions

Today only the NGROK option is possible, I wanted my domain in it.

And the loading speed doesn’t seem local, are there limits to performance?

Replication

Just try to generate a link to the site

System Details

• Which version of Local is being used?
  Last

• What Operating System (OS) and OS version is being used?
  Windows 10 Professional

THX!

[ben.turner]

Hey @ofmarconi, Welcome to the Local Community Forums!

I would hesitate to say that you can use Local as a full “server.”

Yes you can definitely serve a site to the internet using Local’s Live Links, which is a great way to quickly share the current state of a Local site with a few other people. The site tunnel does close down periodically (I think every 12 hours) to help save on bandwidth, but that’s an easy fix by just re-enabling the Live Link.

In my mind, the main issue with calling this a “server” is that it implies that this is something that would be good for production use. When you put a site on a hosted server, what you’re really getting is reliability and performance.

That server is directly connected to the internet and should be more stable than the connection to your house, or the coffee shop or hotel room you might be working from.

Additionally, a dedicated server is only serving your site. If the site is being served from your computer, WordPress and the PHP/MySQL/Nginx that is being used to generate a response is competing for resources with other things like your web browser, music player, Windows updates etc.

Hope that helps clarify things in your mind about the limitations of using Live Links to serve a site to the world!