Cannot Resolve / Access Local Servers via Domain Names

[Seeking Sense]

Hello!

I am new to pfSense and could use some assistance / guidance on how to complete / fix my installation.  Previously used DD-WRT.

I have a block of ( 5 ) static IP addresses provided by my ISP.

The problem that I am having and that I cannot seem to wrap my head around:

I cannot access my web sites hosted on my local network via their domain names from within my LAN.

I see options with in pfSense for:

FIREWALL|NAT|1:1|NAT reflection

SYSTEM|ADVANCED|FIREWALL and NAT|NETWORK ADDRESS TRANSLATION|NAT Reflection

SERVICES|DNS Forward

I have tried a few things with DNS Forwarding that (ALMOST SORT OF KIND OF WORKED BUT DIDN’T)

I feel like I am stumbling around in the dark and would really appreciate someone shinning a light on the solution.

(ALMOST SORT OF KIND OF WORKED BUT DIDN’T)

I enabled DNS FORWARD
Registered DHCP Lease
Registered DHCP Static
Interfaces ALL

Host overrides for internal IP addresses of web servers and mail servers

On workstation I set DNS Server to 192.168.xxx.1
    Search Domains: localdomain

On the servers I set resolve.conf to search localdomain
nameserver 192.168.xxx.1

With this I was able to access my web sites and mail servers on the local network both from the LAN side as well as from the WAN side.

However If the web server tried to get something via a host name e.g.. http://www.example.com or if PHP tried to get something via http://www.example.com it would hang and not resolve

If I tried to access a PHP generated paged for the WAN side it would produce the following error:

exception 'HttpInvalidParamException' with message 'Empty or too short HTTP message: ''' in /var/www/vhosts/mysite.com/httpdocs/myapp/info.php:0
inner exception 'HttpRequestException' with message 'couldn't resolve host name; name lookup timed out (http://www.example.com)'

I am looking for a simple, safe and efficient solution.

I did not have this problem with DD-WRT so I am assuming it’s something that I am missing / not familiar with on pfSense.

Thanks for the anticipated assistance.
Seeking Sense