RW8 Advanced Settings (project settings) shows “Web Server Port”, Restart Web Server, and auto start. When hovering over “Automatically start web server on doc open” the “info” text says
:
If I open a project and do no Preview’s the server is not running when I view these settings. If I Preview a page then check these settings the server is running. Thus, I assume the “preview” server starts upon first Preview and then remains running until a RW “quit?”
I’m just trying to understand these settings (I can find no documentation)…
What would be the practical value of starting the web server on document open (other than first preview being a bit faster??)
What would be the practical benefit of setting my own server port “to connect to RW from a browser without first previewing my site.” as the help text says?
That’s pretty common practice as you can get into port conflicts with other products that use ports like MAMP CodeKit, vs code and Solis. You might also have ports blocked by firewall software.
I think you nailed it with the speed of first preview, can’t think of another reason. I haven’t tried it yet, but wonder if it would slow down document open? Hopefully if’s starting as a background task.
I requested this feature. Its so that you have a known port number when you preview in the browser. This makes it easier to preview from external devices like you iPhone.
and I like to understand.