I've been experimenting with hosting a small website on an old phone for my Dungeons and Dragons game using Termux, Apache, PHP, and MariaDB. My plan is to power it on during sessions so players can access it, and turn it off when it's not in use. However, I recently learned that I need to port forward through a router to make my server visible outside my local network, but I'm using campus Wi-Fi and don't have access to the router.
So, I'm looking for suggestions on free services that could help make my localhost public. I've heard of Ngrok and Cloudflare, but I'm concerned about unexpected costs when I exceed their free limits. It would be great if I could also keep a fun subdomain like afraid.org!
5 Answers
I use Cloudflare Tunnel for hosting apps. It's reliable with no limits on the free plan, which sounds perfect for your situation.
You could try using Tor or Cloudflare's free temporary tunnel; they allow you to expose your localhost without needing any router login. Tor is free forever, but it might slow things down a bit. Both of them can work around CGNAT, so no port forwarding is necessary.
Ngrok is another option to consider. The only downside is that it changes the URL every time you start it up, which can be annoying, but it's totally free.
If you'd rather not mess with your old phone, you might think about hosting it on your laptop instead. Just a thought!
If your app involves a database, a VPS could be more suitable in the long run, but shared hosting is pretty affordable too. For around £20 a year, you can get something that suits your needs and is a lot safer.
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