I’m looking for help setting up my WordPress local development site to work with my custom domain (ctab.tn).
My Current Setup:
WordPress installed locally using Local (formerly Local by Flywheel)
I own the domain ctab.tn that I’d like to use for development
Currently using Local’s default local domain (something like my-site.local)
What I’m Trying to Achieve:
I want to access my local WordPress development site using my custom domain (ctab.tn) instead of the default Local domain, without using Cloudflare or any other third-party proxy services.
My Questions:
How do I properly edit my hosts file to point my custom domain to my local environment?
Are there specific settings I need to configure in Local to recognize my custom domain?
Do I need to update WordPress site URL settings after making these changes?
How do I handle SSL certificates for local development with a custom domain?
Are there any common issues or pitfalls I should be aware of with this setup?
Can you describe in a little more detail about why you’d like to access the site using this custom domain?
If all you are wanting to do is access the site using this domain on the same machine that Local is running – then I think all you have to do is add the domain to the “Advanced” section during the site creation step in Local. You don’t even need to own the domain.
Local will do all the hard work of updating the hosts file and using the correct URL within the WP database.
On the other hand, if you are wanting this site that’s running on your machine to be available over the ctab.tn domain on other machines, then you’ll need to use some other kind of proxy service.
There’s no other way for the domain to resolve to the Local site without that extra tooling.
This is also why Local sites are mostly geared towards development Locally – if you need to share the site, you can either use Live Links (but that uses a different domain) or they deploy changes to a hosted site that has that domain pointed to the server.
