I am confused by this. I use my iPhone, iPad, and Laptop all of the time via WiFi to configure my Hubitat hub. As long as your WiFi network is on the same subnet as your wired network, it should be pretty seamless.
I also connect remotely via OpenVPN to my home network and I can easily access my Hubitat Hub's Web Admin pages by using the IP address of my hub in the URL.
@ogiewon That's what I thought but I haven't been able to access the portal yet. I've already tinkered with my network a bit without any luck. I'll have to check again this evening and see what the issue is.
Some routers prevent users on WiFi from communicating with any devices that are on the wired network. Perhaps that is the problem you're experiencing? This is often the case with a "Guest" WiFi network. Try to PING The IP Address of the Hubitat Hub from your laptop while on WiFi. If the ping works, you should be able to connect via "http://your_hub_lan_ip_address" without assistance from the Portal.
portal???
portal.hubitat.com is, for me, a Once-per-Hub-Lifetime visit. I register, and then never see portal again til I buy another hub. (3 so far.)
DHCP reservation means the IP address is fixed. I also have DNS internally too (bind) and I browse by name, although it works the same if I browse by IP.
Visited Portal again just now to remind myself.. but hovering over the link inside each of my 3 hubs there, it'sj ust a link to the hub's lan IP address.
What I meant by "Portal" is the admin page of my hub. I can only access it via LAN at the moment.
Oh, that’s much better 
@ogiewon @csteele Thanks for the help. After a bit of tinkering I determined that the wireless network profile on my laptop was set to "Public" which wouldn't let it access other devices. I am now able to access my "Portal" [Hub Admin Page] via WLAN.
A week later I'm still unable to grasp Hubitat's interface.
It's now my understanding that a "mode" contains a set of rules or actions to be taken. Is that correct? If so, how or where do I program that set of rules or actions into a mode?
Could someone provide a step by step example? How would I make a mode turn on a light?
@Dustyd5 Use the "Flip Mode"...Flip mode is the greatest!
All joking aside you're ahead of my progress at the moment. I'm still bringing devices into HE 1 at a time and making sure I can manage their state reliably.
LOL. Glad to know I'm not the only person who is not up and running!
That was a really bad Busta Rhymes joke...I have no idea how to configure a mode.
Mode is simply a global variable. The Mode variable can have a value of "Day", "Night", "Away", etc... You can use the "Mode" in various Applications, like Simple Lighting, Motion Lighting, Rule Machine, etc...
This allows automations to behave differently based on the current Mode of your house. For example, if everyone has left the house, you can have the Mode set to Away. You can then change a lighting automation to NOT turn on the lights if the mode is Away. Some Apps can also take action when the Mode changes. So, Mode can be used to trigger an action, or it can be used as a condition for whether or not to take action.
Mode Manager is a nice App you can use to automatically set the Mode of the hub.
Hope this helps a little. You'll get the hang of it!
Sounds like you got lucky with the layer iris stuff.
Problem I have is all of my iris stuff except for the hub and one plugin and one key fob is all first gen. Luckily a couple of light switches and siren were not Iris branded.
So finding replacements is the tough part.
You don't necessarily need to use modes. I don't.
I'm excited about Hubitat but I'm going to miss IRIS. My only regret is not sharing my praise when I had the chance. IRIS worked very well for me but this is probably not the best place to reminisce...LOL
Thanks Eric, I think that may be the best way of looking at it right now.
I guess that raises the question: "Is there anything in Hubitat that you must use a mode for?"
Actually to the contrary. What are you going to miss about Iris? Your feedback is valuable.
I'm probably not a good person to answer as I don't use them but I would think a common use case would be if you want things to happen differently depending on whether you are at home (one mode) or away from home (another mode).
I think setting up your devices first then adding some rules groups etc might be the way to go first. As you become more confident you can incorporate other things if you need to like Mode. Also I've picked up great ideas from the forums here.
Currently I do not use mode either. For the most part I want my home and away patterns to be the same - harder to tell if you are home or not.
No, you don't have to use it for anything. I've seen feedback from several people in various threads who don't use mode for anything at all.
On the other hand, I find it very helpful in setting lighting levels at various times of day. I recently went from a very simple 3 modes (Home, Night, Away) to a more granular 6 modes (Home - Day, Home - Evening, Home - Night, Home - Morning, Away, and Night). I have Mode Manager set mode based on presence, time of day, and switch state. Then using Motion Lighting, Mode Lighting, and Rule Machine I can have various things happen when mode changes. As @ogiewon said above, it's just a global variable that changes based on your inputs, and you can trigger different things to happen with the change.
For me, I have everything shut off when mode goes to Away. I have most things shut off when mode goes to Night. I have ambient and motion lighting come on at different levels using the different Home mode variants. All of this could be accomplished without the use of modes, and some prefer to do it that way. I find it easier to use mode. But the best part, is we have the flexibility to choose what works best for ourselves 
Download the Hubitat app
