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Sharing Your Project

Even though DDEV is intended for local development on a single machine, not as a public server, there are a number of reasons you might want to expose your work in progress more broadly:

  • Testing with a mobile device
  • Sharing on a local network so that everybody on the local network can see your project
  • Some CI applications

There are at least three different ways to share a running DDEV project outside the local developer machine:

  • ddev share (using a tunnel provider like ngrok or cloudflared to share over the internet)
  • Local name resolution and sharing the project on the local network
  • Sharing the HTTP port of the local machine on the local network

Using ddev share (Easiest)

ddev share proxies the project via a tunnel provider for sharing your project with others on your team or around the world. DDEV supports multiple providers:

  • ngrok (default) - Requires an ngrok.com account
  • cloudflared - Free, no account required. Requires cloudflared to be installed
  • Custom providers - You can add your own providers in .ddev/share-providers/

Run ddev share to use the default provider, or ddev share --provider=cloudflared to use a specific provider. The URL will be displayed and can be shared with collaborators or used on mobile devices.

CMSes like WordPress and Magento 2 make this a little harder by only responding to a single base URL that’s coded into the database. ngrok allows you to use one static domain for free so you won’t have to frequently change the base URL. Cloudflared stable custom domains require a free Cloudflare account and a domain with DNS hosted on Cloudflare.

Using ngrok

ngrok is the traditional tunneling solution used by DDEV. It requires an ngrok account (free or paid) and the free account allows you to create tunnels with random URLs or a single static URL.

Installing ngrok

  1. Create an ngrok account at ngrok.com.
  2. Install ngrok with one of many techniques including brew install ngrok (macOS) or snap install ngrok (Linux/WSL2).
  3. Get your token from the dashboard.
  4. Connect ngrok to your account with ngrok config add-authtoken <your-token>.

Setting up a Stable ngrok Domain (optional)

  1. Get a free static domain from ngrok. Let’s say we got wp23.ngrok-free.app.
  2. Pass the domain to the ngrok args:
    • In .ddev/config.yaml, share_provider_args: --domain wp23.ngrok-free.app will result in ngrok always using wp23.ngrok-free.app as the URL, so it’s not changing on you all the time.
    • Alternatively you can pass the domain directly to ddev share --provider-args="--domain wp23.ngrok-free.app"

WordPress special handling: Change the URL with wp search-replace

WordPress only has the one base URL, but the wp command is built into DDEV’s web container.

This set of steps assumes an ngrok domain of wp23.ngrok-free.app and a starting URL of https://wordpress.ddev.site.

  • Configure .ddev/config.yaml to use a custom domain: share_provider_args: --domain wp23.ngrok-free.app.
  • Make a backup of your database with ddev export-db or ddev snapshot.
  • Edit wp-config-ddev.php (or whatever your config is) to change WP_HOME, for example, define('WP_HOME', 'https://wp23.ngrok-free.app');
  • ddev wp search-replace https://wordpress.ddev.site https://wp23.ngrok-free.app, assuming your project is configured for https://wordpress.ddev.site and your share_provider_args are configured for the wp23.ngrok-free.app domain.
  • Now run ddev share.

Magento2 special handling: Change the URL with Magento Tool

This set of steps assumes an ngrok domain mg2.ngrok-free.app:

  • Configure .ddev/config.yaml to use a custom domain with share_provider_args: --domain mg2.ngrok-free.app.
  • Make a backup of your database.
  • Run ddev ssh.
  • Run bin/magento setup:store-config:set --base-url="https://mg2.ngrok-free.app/".
  • Run ddev share and you’ll see your project at mg2.ngrok-free.app.

Using Cloudflared

Cloudflared is a free alternative to ngrok that doesn’t require an account. Each tunnel gets a random temporary URL like https://example-name.trycloudflare.com.

Prerequisites

Install cloudflared from Cloudflare’s installation guide.

Usage

# Use cloudflared for a single share session
ddev share --provider=cloudflared

# Set cloudflared as default for all projects
ddev config global --share-default-provider=cloudflared

# Set cloudflared as default for current project only
ddev config --share-default-provider=cloudflared

The provider priority is: command-line flag > project config > global config > default (ngrok).

Cloudflared Configuration

You can configure cloudflared arguments in your .ddev/config.yaml:

share_provider_args: "--your-args-here"

Or pass them on the command line:

ddev share --provider=cloudflared --provider-args="--your-args-here"

Setting up a Stable Cloudflared Domain

If you have a domain managed by Cloudflare, you can use a named tunnel for a stable, permanent URL instead of the random trycloudflare.com URLs.

Cloudflared Static Domain Requirements

  • A domain managed by Cloudflare (DNS hosted on Cloudflare)
  • cloudflared installed and authenticated: cloudflared tunnel login

Setup Steps

  1. Create a named tunnel:

    cloudflared tunnel create my-ddev-tunnel

    This creates a tunnel and saves credentials in ~/.cloudflared/.

    Multiple Tunnels

    You can create multiple named tunnels for different projects. Each tunnel needs a unique name and DNS record.

  2. Add a DNS route for your tunnel:

    cloudflared tunnel route dns my-ddev-tunnel mysite.example.com

    This creates a CNAME record pointing your subdomain to the tunnel.

  3. Configure DDEV to use the named tunnel:

    ddev config --share-provider-args="--tunnel my-ddev-tunnel --hostname mysite.example.com"

    Or add to .ddev/config.yaml:

    share_provider_args: --tunnel my-ddev-tunnel --hostname mysite.example.com

  4. Share your project:

    ddev share --provider=cloudflared

    Or use --provider-args to pass the tunnel configuration on the command line:

    ddev share --provider=cloudflared --provider-args="--tunnel my-ddev-tunnel --hostname mysite.example.com"

    Your project will be available at https://mysite.example.com.

Using Custom Share Providers

You can customize the built-in providers or create your own share providers. See Custom Share Providers for details.

Using nip.io or Custom Name Resolution Locally

Another solution is to not use *.ddev.site as your project URLs, but to use DNS that you control and that points to the host machine where your project lives. In general, you’ll want to use HTTP URLs with this approach, because it requires manual configuration of the client machine to get it to trust the development certificate that DDEV uses and configures with mkcert on the local machine.

  • Use nip.io to point a domain name to your host. If your computer’s IP address is 192.168.5.101, you can use a domain name like mysite.192.168.5.101.nip.io and that domain name will point to your computer. Add that to your project’s additional_fqdns with ddev config --additional-fqdns=mysite.192.168.5.101.nip.io and ddev start. Now people in your internal network should be able to ping mysite.192.168.5.101.nip.io if your firewall allows it. (If you have other convenient ways to create a DNS entry for this, you can use those instead of nip.io.)
  • Configure $HOME/.ddev/global_config.yaml (see global configuration directory) to bind to all ports: ddev config global --router-bind-all-interfaces && ddev poweroff && ddev start.
  • Now mobile apps or other computers which are on your local network should be able to access your project. Use the HTTP URL rather than the HTTPS URL because computers outside yours don’t know how to trust the developer TLS certificate you’re using. (You can run ddev describe to see the HTTP URL, but it’s typically the same as the HTTPS URL, but with http instead of https.)
  • Make sure your firewall allows access from your local network to the main interface you’re using. In the example here, you should be able to ping 192.168.5.101 and curl http://192.168.5.101 and get an answer in each case.
  • If you’re using WordPress or Magento 2, you’ll need to change the base URL as described in the ddev share instructions above.

Exposing a Host Port and Providing a Direct URL

DDEV’s web container also exposes an HTTP port directly, in addition to the normal routing by name and via ddev_router. You can expose this port and it may be a useful approach in some situations.

  • Configure the project host_webserver_port to a known port (that does not conflict with already configured ports). For example, using port 8080, ddev config --host-webserver-port=8080 --bind-all-interfaces. This will configure the host-bound port to 8080 and allow it to bind to all network interfaces so colleagues (or hackers) on your local network can access this project’s ports.
  • Make sure your firewall allows access to the port on your host machine.
  • If you’re using WordPress or Magento 2 you’ll need to change the base URL as described in the ddev share instructions above.
  • Each project on your computer must use different ports, or you’ll have port conflicts, and you can’t typically use ports 80 or 443 because ddev-router is already using those for normal routing.
  • If you don’t want to run ddev-router at all, you can omit it globally with ddev config global --omit-containers=ddev-router. This is a specialty thing to do when you don’t need the reverse proxy.

Computers and mobile devices on your local network should now be able to access port 8080, on the (example) host address 192.168.5.23, so http://192.168.5.23:8080 You’ll probably want to use the HTTP URL; your coworker’s browser will not trust the developer TLS certificate you’re using.