# Migration from 8th Wall Hosted Platform

The hosted 8th Wall platform was retired Feb 28, 2026. Existing published experiences continue to run until Feb 28, 2027.

## Important

As of February 28, 2026, access to 8thwall.com has ended. It is no longer possible to export 8th Wall hosted projects and migrate them to the open-source ecosystem. If you have specific account or project inquiries please contact [support@nianticspatial.com](mailto:support@nianticspatial.com).

This guide walks through the process of migrating 8th Wall-hosted projects to a self-hosted setup. It applies to all projects previously hosted on 8th Wall, including both **Editor** and **Studio** projects.

## How to Export and Self-Host an 8th Wall Project

## Project Structure

If you previously exported your 8th Wall project's buildable code, you will have a `.zip` file containing the following contents:

### config

Contains the necessary webpack configuration and TypeScript definitions to support project development.

### external

Contains dependencies used by your project, loaded in `index.html`.

### image-targets

Contains your project's image targets (if any).

### src

Contains all your original project code and assets.

**Note:** For Studio projects, the scene graph is stored in a file called `.expanse.json` which may not be visible in your file viewer by default.

## Development

If your project was built with Studio, open the project in the [8th Wall Desktop App](https://8thwall.org/docs/getting-started/installation). With the 8th Wall Desktop App, you can seamlessly continue development and test across desktop and mobile devices without any additional steps.

If your project was built with a web 3D framework such as A-Frame or three.js, you can continue developing using an IDE of your choice and follow the steps below to test the project in real-time on desktop and mobile devices.

### Test on Desktop

1. If node/npm are not installed, install using [nvm](https://github.com/nvm-sh/nvm) or [node](https://nodejs.org/en/download).
2. `cd` to the project root and run `npm install`.

3. Run `npm run serve` to run the development server. Once the local server is running, you will see the URL/IP addresses your project is running at.

4. Open a new browser window and paste in the loopback URL or IP address to test your project in development mode.

### Test on Mobile

To test your project on mobile devices, especially for AR experiences that require camera access, you'll need to serve your development server over HTTPS. We recommend using [ngrok](https://ngrok.com/) to create a secure tunnel to your local server.

After setting up ngrok, add the following configuration to `config/webpack.config.js` under the `devServer` section:

```javascript
devServer: {
  // ... existing config
  allowedHosts: ['.ngrok-free.dev']
}
```

## Links
- [Project Structure](https://8thwall.org/docs/migration/8thwall-hosted#project-structure)
- [Development](https://8thwall.org/docs/migration/8thwall-hosted#development)
- [Test on Desktop](https://8thwall.org/docs/migration/8thwall-hosted#test-on-desktop)
- [Test on Mobile](https://8thwall.org/docs/migration/8thwall-hosted#test-on-mobile)