Manage Local Server .dev Environments with “Hotel”

By Jake Rocheleau. in Hosting. Updated on July 22, 2022.

Every web developer needs their own local server environment for testing projects. These servers can range from PHP/MySQL to complex setups with Rails, Mongo, or Node.js.

With Hotel, you can build custom .dev environments for multiple server setups, all with one tool on one computer. It’s the perfect resource for new & experienced developers alike.

Hotel supports all OS types, including Mac OS X, Microsoft Windows, and most variants of Linux. It runs through terminal/Shell commands, so you need to use the command line to run this application. But, it’s all pretty easy to get started and incredibly powerful once you get going.

You need to install Node/npm before you can run Hotel. It’s powered on the Node backend but you only need one line of code to get it installed:

npm install -g hotel && hotel start

From there, you can set up any type of local server environment with support for basically every web technology you can imagine.

Each local server can be configured with custom language support such as PHP or Ruby. Plus, you can define custom installs for frameworks such as Laravel, RoR, or Django (among others).

The best part is that each local server comes with a unique .dev subdomain. So, you can set up a local environment at laravel.dev which would link directly to your Laravel environment.

All the code is completely open source and the full documentation is available on GitHub.

But, if you’re looking for a clear starting point I recommend this video created by Josh Owens of Spacedojo. It’s only an eight-minute video and it’ll cover everything you need to get local .dev servers running on Hotel in minutes.