Local Web Development Using Spare Mac to View

Question

Hi
Hum, hope I can be clear.... my mission: use old laptop (Tiger) to view web sites in the User/Sites folder on my new laptop (Snow Leopard) via web sharing. Why? Well, it's another screen, it's there and importantly, it represents the majority of visitors to sites. Roughly 50% of visitors are using screens of 1024 - 1280 width. My new hi-res mac represents about 5% of visitors. This seems pretty consistent across all the sites.
Anyhow, I have the hosts and httpd.conf files set up to serve multiple sites using NameVirtualHost *:80 and the <virtualhost> directive. (On my new laptop). So.. I can type into the address bar in Safari et al (new laptop) "http://mySiteWhatever/".
What I've achieved is: (old laptop) typing in Safari et al "http://newMacID.local/" or "http://newMacIPAddress/" displays the first site in the virtualhosts list.
What I've no idea how get to view the other sites in the list.
Some pointers would be really helpful and appreciated - I'm more than happy to put in the time figuring out for myself. As things stand, I've no idea what direction to go in even.
Thank you for reading.
Message was edited by: BluePlumUk

Answer 1

Hi everyone.
Firstly a big thank you all for pitching in with kind suggestions, really appreciated... though BobHarris you naughty salesman. Did it with charm though so forgiven this once
Anyway... apologies for taking a while to add anything, I have been reading them as they've come through. I've hung back because I'm battling with my own ignorance on this topic and want to be able to add sensible statements here... and try things out.
Roger... all the sites are dynamic (use a database, php for example) so I'm afraid the 'simple' approach of inputting file://... into the browser doesn't work. I need to 'parse' the sites as though they are on a web server. Thank you all the same, for html only sites it's the way to go.
Thomas... I had try of MAMP and while I know lot's of people use it, I came to the conclusion myself personally that I should persevere with setting up the Tiger laptop Apache to operate as it should, and I'm glad I did, Proved useful experience to have under my belt. Just my own personal viewpoint. Of course with Snow Leopard Apache's all sorted out-of-the-box which is really cool. Thank you for taking the time to offer a suggestion, not a wrong one.
Hans... thank you for your pointers. Brilliant. Sorted me out. Bloomin marvelous. It was the second paragraph connected with a half formed instinct I had that the second (old) mac was needing extra info somehow somewhere.
So... for everyone who's shown interest ->
New mac serving web sites from the built in Apache as proper web sites, dynamic, database driven, whatever. Type in to browser "http://sitenamewhatever.ifyoulike" and you'd think it was 'out there' on the web. (Anyone wanting to sort the same situ should look at the Apache link Hans provided, all a bit technical, but worth persevering with. I use Smultron text editor for editing hidden files rather than terminal).
Old/second mac needed the ip address for the new mac writing into it's Apache host.conf file. The ip address needs to be the network ip not the standard mac ip. Now, I can type in "http://sitenamewhatever.ifyoulike" in a browser on the old (second) mac and voila! Awesomely useful.
What I don't know is what (router, mac itself) is identifying the network ip and therefore when/if it might change... I do know it's not dynamic in so far as it booted up today with the same ip.
Bit of a long post, but hopefully a helpful one.
Thank you all again.
Regards and respect to you, everyone.
Edit: Just a note - When I said "as proper web sites" I mean the websites are all behind the firewall, 'local' only. Viewable by me and my macs only – a 'private internet'. Of course there are copies out on the internet, on web servers - 'remote' copies viewable by everyone.
Message was edited by: BluePlumUk