One Sunday morning, I found myself tackling the usual trifecta of local development issues:

1. Using Fully Qualified Domain Names (FQDNs) in local testing environments
2. Dealing with SSL certificates in a local setting, where self-signed certificates are a nuisance
3. Implementing sub-domains in local development environments

To address these, I registered the domain localhost.direct and obtained a wildcard SSL certificate. I configured localhost.direct and *.localhost.direct to point to 127.0.0.1. Now, happy coding!

Eureka! I realized that I could share the private key and SSL certificate with developers globally at no extra cost. Thus, the *.localhost.direct project was born.

A project portal is available at https://get.localhost.direct/ for developers to download the most up-to-date SSL certificate bundle. This becomes the sole reserved subdomain. Updates to the wildcard SSL certificate will be posted, and your feedback is greatly appreciated.

Cheers!

localhost.direct works immediately without configuration, functioning just like the traditional localhost, with added support for subdomain.localhost.direct.

Download or clone the .key and .crt files, then deploy them to your local web server to set up an SSL-enabled local development environment.

get.localhost.direct is reserved and it is the only subdomain that you cannot use.

https://aka.re/localhost

localhost

• 2024-Apr-20 SSL Intermediate Chain update with the help of @mundry, Expire keep 15 May 2025
• 2024-Apr-17 SSL Renewal, Expire 15 May 2025
• 2023-Jun-15 SSL Intermediate Chain update, Expire 31 Mar 2024
• 2023-Apr-01 SSL Renewal, Expire 31 Mar 2024
• 2022-Aug-29 Reupload the SSL file of 2022-Mar-29 (Expire 30 Apr 23)
• 2022-Mar-29 SSL Renewal
• 2021-Mar-02 SSL Renewal
• 2020-Feb-26 SSL Renewal
• 2019-Feb-24 SSL project

This project is self-funded and shared freely with the community. We respect your privacy; your usage of localhost.direct is anonymous to us.
Giving this project a star fuels our commitment to maintaining and improving it.

Donations are welcomed at paypal.me/Upinel and are deeply appreciated.

• SkyArk Inc (UK)
• Jackson Peak LLC
• the Lancelot Limited
• Peter Jong
• cagnulein
• Klijn Engineering

I love you all <3