STU-22: Add custom local domain support for WordPress sites by youknowriad · Pull Request #994 · Automattic/studio

youknowriad · 2025-03-02T13:19:47Z

Related issues

Fixes Feature Request: Router mode request (localhost and site domain) #215

Summary …

Implemented custom domain support for WordPress sites using a proxy server
Added UI for setting custom domains when creating sites
Integrated with system hosts file for local domain resolution
The user chooses a custom domain on site creation (editing an existing site is harder because it would require updates to the WP database).

Implementation details

Created a proxy server that listens on port 80 and forwards requests to the appropriate local site. This means that if 80 is already used, custom domains won't work (there's no way around this)
Added domain management in hosts file to resolve custom domains to localhost
Updated site details to store and display custom domain information
Modified URL display in settings to show custom domain when enabled
Added validation for custom domain format

Test plan

Create a new site with custom domain enabled
Verify the domain is added to hosts file (requires admin permission)
Visit the site using the custom domain (without port)
Verify admin and frontend URLs work properly
Delete the site and verify domain is removed from hosts file

Pre-merge Checklist

Have you checked for TypeScript, React or other console errors?

Important note This PR has been created for a huge part using AI. My main purpose with this PR was to learn both Studio's code base and learn AI while implementing a useful feature.

youknowriad · 2025-03-03T07:15:22Z

+	try {
+		console.log( 'Attempting to start proxy server with elevated privileges' );
+
+		if ( currentPlatform === 'win32' ) {


Apparently in Windows, we need to run the proxy with admin rights. The AI proposed using netsh to forward to a custom port. I need someone to help me test Windows.

fredrikekelund

This seems to work relatively well in my light testing, which is great 👍 Still, this is a big feature, and we will need to test it thoroughly before landing.

A couple of initial high-level thoughts:

There are several visual issues in the Add site modal right now. We should get some designer input from @matt-west or someone else on how to implement this.
Users should be able to edit the domain after a site is added. This is already a big PR, so we don't necessarily need to implement that here, but it should go into the same release as this feature.

fredrikekelund · 2025-03-04T10:01:27Z

+	useCustomDomain,
+	setUseCustomDomain,
+	customDomain,
+	setCustomDomain,
+	customDomainError,


This is not the fault of this PR, but we should really move this state inside SiteForm and pass it back to the parent in the onSubmit handler. Too much prop drilling now with no clear benefit.

Entirely agree, I noticed it too :)

fredrikekelund · 2025-03-04T11:39:43Z

+		if ( domainRegex.test( hostsContent ) ) {
+			return; // Domain already exists
+		}


What do we do when this happens..? Display some kind of error in the app?

To clarify, I was thinking of cases when the domain is pointing to a different IP. Edge case, perhaps, but it ties into other error handling questions like #994 (comment)

wojtekn

The basic happy path works fine on Mac. I left some comments related to small issues and different cases.

youknowriad · 2025-03-07T11:45:31Z

Could we send a different message to showErrorMessageBox depending on the exception type/message and keep the old one for all exceptions but the ones stemming from sudoExec..? See source.

I don't see any other way other than checking the string or introducing a format/classes for errors. The latter is better but I think it warrants its own PR instead.

youknowriad · 2025-03-07T11:59:19Z

@wojtekn What is the domain you're using to test the transliterated domains? In my testing these are rejected during validation at the moment (which could be a good way to start)

fredrikekelund · 2025-03-07T12:21:04Z

I don't see any other way other than checking the string or introducing a format/classes for errors. The latter is better but I think it warrants its own PR instead.

Gotcha. I agree with all of that. Let's look into it separately 👍

wojtekn · 2025-03-07T12:41:15Z

What is the domain you're using to test the transliterated domains? In my testing these are rejected during validation at the moment (which could be a good way to start)

It was Japanese with the "マイ WordPress サイト" site name auto-generated. I pulled changes, but I don't see an auto-generated domain for any language.

youknowriad · 2025-03-07T13:22:46Z

The second one is that I see ECONNREFUSED exception logged to the console when I start sites with custom domain. It doesn't seem to affect Studio, though.

I'm not seeing that at the moment but my guess is that it happens maybe because the apps is trying to generate a "preview" while the site is not ready yet. (just a guess).

youknowriad · 2025-03-07T13:24:44Z

Thanks both of you for your valuable reviews. I think I've addressed all the points. Let me know if we're missing something.

wojtekn · 2025-03-07T14:06:24Z

Works great now! Thanks for adding test for the domain generation.

I'm not seeing that at the moment but my guess is that it happens maybe because the apps is trying to generate a "preview" while the site is not ready yet. (just a guess).

I can't reproduce it now, too.

fredrikekelund

Looking good, @youknowriad 👍 Thanks for addressing all those comments. Let's make sure we get a design review for this before landing, but the core functionality looks mostly solid to me now (I just need to understand the logic around internationalized domain names)

matt-west · 2025-03-07T17:17:37Z

Thanks @youknowriad. A lot of users are going to love this feature!

I tested this locally and it worked well, although starting the site after entering my system password was quite slow.

What’s stopping us from creating a custom domain for every new site that’s created in Studio? Local takes that approach. I feel like the custom domain field should be directly under Site name. That would also allow us to eliminate the checkbox.

A few things I noticed testing this.

The Advanced settings dropdown and Local path field are misaligned.

Let’s display the password note on the Domain name field instead and update the copy to:

Your system password will be required to set up the domain.

There’s no way to edit the domain after I’ve created the site. Perhaps that’s coming in a follow-up PR?
Was the custom domain option added to the onboarding screen too? (I don’t have an easy way to test that.)

youknowriad · 2025-03-07T17:40:23Z

What’s stopping us from creating a custom domain for every new site that’s created in Studio? Local takes that approach. I feel like the custom domain field should be directly under Site name. That would also allow us to eliminate the checkbox.

Local has a "router mode" that is applied globally that you can disable. Also switching it back and forth means all your existing sites would stop working for now. Personally I prefer the control site per site but we can always have it as a global mode later. The reason we don't do it automatically though is that it depends on admin rights and not all the users have these.

The Advanced settings dropdown and Local path field are misaligned.

This was a result of a rebase, it's now fixed

Let’s display the password note on the Domain name field instead and update the copy to:

This is addressed too

There’s no way to edit the domain after I’ve created the site. Perhaps that’s coming in a follow-up PR?

A potential follow-up indeed, but it's not that simple because it requires updating the WP database for existing sites.

Was the custom domain option added to the onboarding screen too? (I don’t have an easy way to test that.)

Yes

fredrikekelund · 2025-03-10T08:25:26Z

The Advanced settings dropdown and Local path field are misaligned.

That looks like a regression unrelated to this PR. I've created https://github.com/Automattic/dotcom-forge/issues/10582 to track it. It still looks better with @youknowriad's latest changes – at least the local path and domain fields are consistently aligned now.

youknowriad · 2025-03-10T08:56:20Z

Can I get an approval here? What do you think is left?

fredrikekelund

I ran another round of tests on Mac and Windows – it's looking good and works as expected. I did however encounter one more error handling scenario that I think we should handle before landing this PR (EADDRINUSE errors on port 80).

I believe we should be good to land this PR after addressing that 👍

fredrikekelund

Nice work, @youknowriad! We should be good to land this now 👍

Let's add some additional rows to our smoke testing sheet for this feature, @wojtekn. That gives us another chance to catch potential errors before the next release.

wojtekn · 2025-03-10T11:29:48Z

Let's add some additional rows to our smoke testing sheet for this feature, @wojtekn. That gives us another chance to catch potential errors before the next release.

I've added a test case for local domain.

youknowriad added the [Type] Enhancement label Mar 2, 2025

youknowriad requested review from fredrikekelund, katinthehatsite and nightnei March 2, 2025 13:19

youknowriad self-assigned this Mar 2, 2025

youknowriad force-pushed the add/custom-domain-support branch 2 times, most recently from 4f49875 to 57a013b Compare March 2, 2025 13:23

youknowriad commented Mar 3, 2025

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Comment thread src/lib/proxy-server.ts Outdated

youknowriad requested review from sejas and wojtekn March 3, 2025 08:56

mcsf reviewed Mar 3, 2025

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ellatrix reviewed Mar 3, 2025

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fredrikekelund requested review from a team and removed request for fredrikekelund, katinthehatsite, nightnei, sejas and wojtekn March 3, 2025 11:47

youknowriad commented Mar 3, 2025

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Comment thread src/lib/hosts-file.ts

jsnajdr reviewed Mar 4, 2025

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fredrikekelund reviewed Mar 4, 2025

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wojtekn reviewed Mar 4, 2025

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fredrikekelund requested a review from matt-west March 4, 2025 15:07

richtabor added Enhancement and removed [Type] Enhancement labels Mar 5, 2025

youknowriad requested review from fredrikekelund and wojtekn March 5, 2025 19:17

youknowriad force-pushed the add/custom-domain-support branch from 264b825 to 48a1f37 Compare March 7, 2025 11:44

Fix unit tests post rebase

fe72b22

Fix international domain names

ee6b173

Fix linting

31fde4d

fredrikekelund reviewed Mar 7, 2025

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Comment thread src/hooks/use-add-site.ts Outdated

fredrikekelund reviewed Mar 7, 2025

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youknowriad added 2 commits March 7, 2025 17:38

Nitpicks

b2e81be

Capture sentry errors

4499e96

Design tweaks

20e2349

youknowriad mentioned this pull request Mar 8, 2025

STU-19: Add SSL Support #1034

Merged

Better domain regex

d6a42be

fredrikekelund reviewed Mar 10, 2025

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Comment thread src/lib/hosts-file.ts Outdated

Comment thread src/lib/proxy-server.ts

Comment thread src/lib/proxy-server.ts

Comment thread src/lib/proxy-server.ts Outdated

Comment thread src/index.ts Outdated

Handle 80 port conflicts properly

852a114

fredrikekelund approved these changes Mar 10, 2025

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youknowriad merged commit e5cc16d into trunk Mar 10, 2025

youknowriad deleted the add/custom-domain-support branch March 10, 2025 10:09

mcsf mentioned this pull request Mar 13, 2025

Replace deprecated sudo-prompt with @vscode/sudo-prompt #1065

Merged

fredrikekelund mentioned this pull request May 7, 2025

SSL Support: Hide all HTTPS help messages when the certificate is trusted #1117

Merged

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Related issues

Summary …

Implementation details

Test plan

Pre-merge Checklist

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youknowriad commented Mar 7, 2025

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