View local website from Android phone - mobile

Question

I have a mobile website locally hosted in IIS7. I want to view it in my android phone. This is not the usual case of accessing 127.0.0.1, which I have done already.
I set an inbound rule in Firewall for port 80. My IP, assigned by router, 198.162.2.10, which when open in my mobile shows the IIS7 image.
The problem I face is, I usually do the project in D:\ drive than in wwwroot, not to loose any files in case of OS crash or re-install. So to link these projects, I create a website in IIS and give a naming like myprofile.net and assign it to 127.0.0.1. So when I type myprofile.net in the browser, the website is rendered.
How do I access this website, from my android phone?
I know a "workaround" to
copy all the websites into wwwroot? That negates the main point.
connecting phone to PC's ad-hoc or vice versa? I don't want this, either of this puts my computer from internet, and developing without internet is impossible.
upload to ftp server and view from phone? This is what I am currently doing.
Is there a solution?

Answer 1

You could make a symlink to your websites' files on the D:\ to your wwwroot directory.
Here's a tutorial link
and a custom command for you:
C:\mklink /D C:\path\to\wwwroot\NameOfWebsite D:\path\to\website\to\create\the\symlink\for\NameOfWebsite
Also if you may need to updated your virtualhost file... I use apache, been 6+ years since I used IIS :/ so hopefully this is relevant:
example of what you'll want to change:
<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerAdmin gopikrishna.s#gmail.com
DocumentRoot "C:\path\to\wwwroot\NameOfWebsite"
ServerName NameOfWebsite
<Directory "C:\path\to\wwwroot\NameOfWebsite">
Options Indexes FollowSymLinks ExecCGI MultiViews #NOTE THESE OPTIONS Follow SymLinks is NEEDED
AllowOverride All
Order allow,deny
Allow from all
</Directory>
#EXAMPLE alias if you have any.
#Alias /graphics "D:/workspace/graphics"
</VirtualHost>
You will also have to update the hosts file located normally in
C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc
right click notepad and run as administator to make edit's to the system file hosts.
click File->Open
locate your hosts file directory
change Text Documents (.txt) to All Files (.*) to see the hosts file (among others)
open the hosts file and add this line to the bottom of the file:
127.0.0.1 NameOfWebsite
This line should have the same name you put as your ServerName in your httpd-vhosts.conf file or the IIS equivalent.
Save the hosts file and reset your IIS server
Now you should be able to run in your android's browser (if connected to your local router which the IIS server is also connected to) the web server's IP address which as mention in your post would be
198.162.2.10
and that should show your websites in your android's browser.
Also be sure to put which ever website you want to see in your browser at the top of any other vhost configurations.
That is to say:
in your hosts file make sure if their are other lines like
127.0.0.1 some.site.local
127.0.0.1 another.site
127.0.0.1 NameOfWebsite <------ This should go
That you put the one you want to see at the top of the list like so:
127.0.0.1 NameOfWebsite <-------- HERE
127.0.0.1 some.site.local
127.0.0.1 another.site
And for the httpd-vhosts.conf file make sure the whole ........
Section is above all others.
I hope this helps a bit, feel free to add anything or subtract anything changes are more than welcomed. Forgive me if I over spoke on this post or gave details you already knew.
I think the symlinks are basically all you need, but the other stuff probably will help as well.