Using Mac to host a WordPress site over LAN for all other computers to access

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Using Mac to host a WordPress site over LAN for all other computers to access

Does anyone know of an Apple support document, or other, that helps Mac owners connect to another Mac, functioning as a dev server, over LAN, to develop WordPress sites that are accessible by Macs / PCs / iPhones / iPads / etc. that are all on the same LAN?

I've been searching for a good walk-through for this, but no luck searching Google.

This article come close [not from Apple.com]:

How to install a WordPress development environment on a Mac

It uses the MAMP bundle to broadcast the site over the computer's IP address (http://192.168.1.XX:8888/wordpress/index.php), but this does not allow for accessing the WP admin login - (http://192.168.1.XX:8888/wordpress/wp-admin).
Not sure what's preventing the admin page from loading, but I can access the front-end site (http://192.168.1.XX:8888/wordpress/index.php), yet no images load.
http://localhost:8888/wordpress/wp-admin/ works from Safari on the computer hosting the site

I want to be able to access the wp-admin from my other Mac or my PC or my iPhone or iPad to test the site in a LAN environment.

My hunch is I need to configure my firewall settings or make adjustments to permissions for certain files, but from there I'm lost.

Mac Studio, macOS 12.5

Posted on Aug 12, 2022 6:16 PM

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TRHudson Author

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Aug 12, 2022 7:45 PM in response to TRHudson

Ok, so I figured out what the problem was.

Per the Hostpapa walkthrough, they advise you to set your WordPress Database Host to "localhost", which is great if you want to keep the site on the same computer that your adding content via wp-admin.

But if you want to have the dev site accessible by other devices on the same LAN, you need to replace the "localhost" with the computer's IP address and keeping rest of the address the same, e.g.,

"localhost" settings in wp-admin

Need to change to...

IP address "192.168.1.XX" settings. [where XX is the last integer of your IP address]

Once I saved this and tried again from my other computers/devices, the site came up with images and the wp-admin was accessible. Originally, WordPress was linking everything with the "localhost" domain, but that only points to the computer you are using, not the computer the files are on.

Regarding firewalls

MAMP is set up to allow incoming connections

Regarding :8888

This is the port MAMP uses, so you need to have that set up in MAMP and it needs to be part of the address after the IP address

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Using Mac to host a WordPress site over LAN for all other computers to access

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