Hosting Drawpiles with NGROK
As a brief overview, Drawpile is an art program that allows several people to draw on one digital canvas at the same time. NGROK will allow you to use Drawpile without having to wrestle with your network or firewall settings. It is safe and secure to use for programs such as Drawpile. This tutorial will be split into 2 sections: First Time Setup, which you only need to do once and Setup for Each Use, which you need to do every time you use NGROK with Drawpile.
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First Time Setup
1. First, make an account at NGROK's website. Sign up is easy and free.
2. Find an easily accessible place on your computer to put NGROK in. Then download ngrok.exe from the website to that location.
3. Open Command Prompt (or Windows PowerShell) by right clicking the Windows icon in the bottom left. On Mac, go to Applications > Utilities > Terminal
4. Navigate to wherever you put your ngrok.exe by using the terminal. To do this, use the cd command followed by the file path. Then press enter. (I put mine in a folder labeled "Games" on my Desktop for example, so I manually wrote out cd C:\Users\YourNameHere\Desktop\Games).
5. Go to the "Get Started Page" and copy and paste the authtoken command found at the top into your command prompt (if it doesn't work, delete the ./ they put in front).
This is a code directly linked to your account, so don't share it.
Those are all the steps you need to do for using NGROK the first time. Next comes the steps you need to perform every time you want to use NGROK with Drawpile.
2. Find an easily accessible place on your computer to put NGROK in. Then download ngrok.exe from the website to that location.
3. Open Command Prompt (or Windows PowerShell) by right clicking the Windows icon in the bottom left. On Mac, go to Applications > Utilities > Terminal
4. Navigate to wherever you put your ngrok.exe by using the terminal. To do this, use the cd command followed by the file path. Then press enter. (I put mine in a folder labeled "Games" on my Desktop for example, so I manually wrote out cd C:\Users\YourNameHere\Desktop\Games).
5. Go to the "Get Started Page" and copy and paste the authtoken command found at the top into your command prompt (if it doesn't work, delete the ./ they put in front).
This is a code directly linked to your account, so don't share it.
Those are all the steps you need to do for using NGROK the first time. Next comes the steps you need to perform every time you want to use NGROK with Drawpile.
Setup for Each Use
1. Perform steps 3 and 4 from the previous section to open up Command Prompt, Terminal, etc.
2. Type ngrok tcp 27750 and press enter. If that doesn't work, type ./ngrok tcp 27750 instead. This will connect you to Drawpile's servers.
3. The terminal should spit out a few things. What you need is the Forwarding Address. It should look something like this:
Forwarding tcp://0.tcp.ngrok.io:12345 -> localhost:27750
4. Copy the above bolded section from your command prompt. This is the link you'll give to people who want to join your Drawpile. People joining the Drawpile will go to Session > Join and put the code in the server address. Keep the Command Prompt window open until you are done using Drawpile.
NOTE: If you're using Command Prompt, you have to use the Edit section to copy and paste things, you can't use your keyboard shortcuts. Go to "Mark" to highlight whatever it is you want to copy.
5. Open Drawpile and go to Session > Host. Title the session anything you want. Make Sure “Built -in” is selected at the bottom. Username will be the name that appears when you talk in the chat.
A. You may enter a password to give to people if you want it to be even more private (optional).
B. If you want your server publicly listed on Drawpile’s site, select “Announce at Drawpile.net” (optional). Then click the “Host” button.
6. Once you are finished with your Drawpile session, all you have to do is close the Command Prompt window. Hope this was easy to understand. Have fun drawing! :)
2. Type ngrok tcp 27750 and press enter. If that doesn't work, type ./ngrok tcp 27750 instead. This will connect you to Drawpile's servers.
3. The terminal should spit out a few things. What you need is the Forwarding Address. It should look something like this:
Forwarding tcp://0.tcp.ngrok.io:12345 -> localhost:27750
4. Copy the above bolded section from your command prompt. This is the link you'll give to people who want to join your Drawpile. People joining the Drawpile will go to Session > Join and put the code in the server address. Keep the Command Prompt window open until you are done using Drawpile.
NOTE: If you're using Command Prompt, you have to use the Edit section to copy and paste things, you can't use your keyboard shortcuts. Go to "Mark" to highlight whatever it is you want to copy.
5. Open Drawpile and go to Session > Host. Title the session anything you want. Make Sure “Built -in” is selected at the bottom. Username will be the name that appears when you talk in the chat.
A. You may enter a password to give to people if you want it to be even more private (optional).
B. If you want your server publicly listed on Drawpile’s site, select “Announce at Drawpile.net” (optional). Then click the “Host” button.
6. Once you are finished with your Drawpile session, all you have to do is close the Command Prompt window. Hope this was easy to understand. Have fun drawing! :)