WordPress Docker Stack

This Docker stack initializes the following services:

• Traefik for accepting incoming http/https requests and automating ssl certificates both in dev and production. The dev ssl certificate will generate a browser warning.
• Nginx with caching for reverse proxying to the WordPress php-fpm service
• WordPress php-fpm image for the WordPress installation. Themes and plugins can be stored in code under the ./wordpress directory.
• WordPress CLI service for running wp-cli against WordPress.
• MariaDB service for the database.
• Redis for caching alongside php object cache.
• Watchtower for automatically updating your docker images. Specify a minor version in the .env file to update minor releases or lock down upates by specifying a patch version. The .env-template file lists minor versions.

This repository is meant to act as a template for setting up your WordPress stack.

Initial Setup

Step 1: Update your .env dotfile for the enviornment that your working in (development, staging, production).

Step 2: Start docker and launch this stack using docker compose up -d.

Step 1: Configuration

Environment Configuration

This stack can be configured for different environments using the .env dotfile. See .env-template for all variables available. Copy .env-template to .env and update as necessary. This is where you change database username and password, update nginx configuration, specify which docker image versions to use for each service, etc.

Service Configuration

Service configuration can be adjusted under /.docker. You can adjust settings like php memory, nginx conf, mysql memory limit, and etc.

.docker
├── mysql
│   └── my.cnf
├── nginx
│   └── conf.d
│       └── default.conf
└── php
    └── custom.ini

Step 2: Start Docker Stack

In a development environment, you can download Docker Desktop. On other systems, you will need to install Docker Engine and start the dameon.

Once Docker has been started, you can issue docker compose up -d and the stack will start. Please see below for more information on using docker compose.

Docker Compose Basics

View the docker compose documentation.

Common commands to use on a docker stack.

docker compose up -d            # start services

docker compose ps               # view service info

docker compose logs -f          # follow docker logs

docker compose stop             # stop containers

docker compose down             # remove containers

Administration Scripts

This repository includes various scripts located under ./scripts to administer backups, etc. These scripts rely on a .env file in the root directory of your project. Scripts need to be run from the root diretory in order to read the .env file.

sh ./scripts/backup-volumes.sh  # Backup traefik, wordpress, and database data

sh ./scripts/restore-volumes.sh # Restore traefik, wordpress, and database data

Development Environment with Multipass

Using Multipass, it is easy to develop locally using this stack. Execute the included multipass.sh script to start an ubuntu based docker instance. This will install Docker with the compose plugin.

sh multipass.sh

In order to access your multipass ubuntu instance for development, you need to add a hosts entry. Get the IP address of your instance by running multipass ls and then add the IP address and domain name you want to access your instance from to your /etc/hosts file. For example:

multipass ls
docker-wordpress        Running           10.211.55.40     Ubuntu 21.10
                                          172.17.0.1
                                          10.1.0.1
                                          172.18.0.1
                                          172.19.0.1

Add the ip/domain entry to /etc/hosts.

10.211.55.40    wordpress.local

Docker commands in Multipass

You can ssh into your multipass instance to execute docker compose commands:

multipass sh docker-wordpress       # docker-wordpress is the name of the
                                    # instance supplied in multipass.sh

cd wordpress                        # cd into the mounted directory

docker compose logs -f              # view the logs

You can also run the commands from your host machine but the syntax is much longer:

multipass exec docker-wordpress -- \
    bash -c 'cd /home/ubuntu/wordpress && docker compose logs -f'