Publish a Local Webserver
Updated
Diode is the Swiss army knife of Web3 capabilities! One of the neat things it allows you to do is to publish a local website / webserver to the Internet where anyone can view it.
A common reason for doing this is to allow others to see a website that is under development - the development is done locally and can be viewed by collaborators remotely without setting up a staging server and without any IT tools / configuration. It is much easier and faster to just use Diode to publish your development website so that you can get others' feedback.
Using this method, you could also host a website long term without requiring a server, static IP address, or ICANN-registered domain name.
Have fun with this, and let use know in our Telegram channel if you have any feature requests!
Publish a Local Website
If you already have a website running on port 80 of localhost, install Diode and simply run:
diode publish -public 80:80
This publishes whatever you see at http://localhost:80 to the Diode Network at <client_address>:80. It is accessible on the Internet at https://<client_address>.diode.link.
The <client_address> can be found in the terminal output, as shown boxed in red below, when the command is ran. The line "Http Gateway Enabled" shows the full external URL - in the case shown below, it is http://0x70114a27f3d1b549012498c69a4120ca4ea11e21.diode.link/ You can use that URL to share your website with others.
If you don't yet have a web server, Ghost is a good option - see the article about running Ghost on a Raspberry Pi.
If you are running a service on another port, for example localhost port 2368 (or - Elixir dev server usually uses port 4000, node typically uses port 3000), you can publish it to public port 80 with:
diode publish -public 2368:80
You can also publish on multiple different ports. For example if you want to show two differents sites, or publish a main site and a hidden admin area. For this the HTTP gateway supports the additional port ranges 8000-8100 and 8400-8500. This is an example publishing port 80 to https://<client>.diode.link and port 2368 to https://<client.diode.link:8025
diode publish -public 80:80,2368:8025
Configure a "Domain Name" with the Diode Blockchain Name System (BNS)
In the example above, the URL starts with your globally unique static Client address - a boring sequence of numbers and letters: http://0x70114a27f3d1b549012498c69a4120ca4ea11e21.diode.link/If you want to customize the name, you need to setup a BNS name to map to your address.
There are two ways to do this:
1) Configure MetaMask and use the Diode Network Explorer (docs) to reserve a BNS name and link it to your Client address
2) Use the Diode Client itself to reserve and link:
diode bns -register my-example-name
IMPORTANT NOTE: Using the Diode Client to register the BNS name binds the the name to your Client's local wallet. Ensure you keep a backup of your wallet file at ~/.config/diode/private.db so you won’t lose access to the domain! If you want one location to manage all your BNS names, use the Diode Network Explorer method (you can use a MetaMask wallet, or hardware wallet, to manage all your BNS names). That allows you to, for example, easily link the BNS name to a different Client address.
Once you've created your BNS name and linked it to your Client address, your website will now be available at https://my-example-name.diode.link. Note that you may need to wait a few minutes for the BNS name to be trusted by the network.
Publish the Website Securely
If you'd only like certain individuals to access your website, you can use the publish option -privateto publish it so that only a single specified Diode address can access it, or the option -protected so that only Diode addresses listed in the same Fleet Contract can access it. For example:
diode publish -private 80:80,<authorized_address>
Run diode publish --help for more information.
When using these modes, each viewer must also be running the Diode Client as a local gateway so as to authenticate themselves with the Diode Network.
Other Articles
Setup a custom domain name (web2 TLD)
Use the Diode CLI to publish static content (no other webserver required)
