So I am currently working on a Ruby on Rails project through an Eclipse / Aptana / Radrails setup under Windows.
Like normal, my development server is a WEBrick server running through http://localhost:3000
This works fine locally at one workstation, however, sometimes I want to access this project from another computer, through my VM, or through the web.
I initially thought that opening port 3000 to the web was as simple as
1) Opening the port in Windows Firewall AND 2) Redirecting the traffic with my router
However, I soon realized that this does not work. For some reason, the WEBrick server is not listening to port 3000. I struggled with this for weeks and could not find a solution, until I added one more step:
3) Under RadRails in “Server” choose “Edit Server” and change “Host” from 127.0.0.1 to 0.0.0.0
This simple change will now allow you to access your development server through the web.
Of course, don't be an idiot. There are probably tons of security flaws with this, so only use this on a personal level. Good luck.