WordPress on Docker: Quick 10-Minute Setup Guide

WordPress is an opensource, easy to build CMS (Content Management System) proudly built with a combination of PHP and MySQL. It is hard to find anyone who hasn’t heard about WordPress. WordPress is a popular choice for a Web Developer when creating different types of websites, from blogs to eCommerce sites. This guide shows you how to run WordPress on Docker.

To run a WordPress site, we need LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP) or LEMP (Linux, Nginx, MySQL, and PHP) stack, which can take time three times over, for local, staging, and production servers. However, by using Docker and Docker Compose, we can simplify the process of setting up preferred stack and installing WordPress. What Is Docker? – Docker is open-source software that creates environments to build, share and run an application. Hence, you can develop, test, and run multiple applications on the same machine.

In this article, we will build a multi-container WordPress install, which means WordPress containerization with Docker. First, we will create containers for MySQL Database, PhpMyAdmin, and WordPress itself.

Installation

Install Docker: To install Docker CE please follow the official website, based on your Operation System.

Install Docker Compose : To install Docker CE please follow the official website, based on your Operation System.

Setup WordPress on Docker

Let’s move forward and configure Docker Compose for WordPress. You can do this with the Docker CLI. However, here we follow the simpler and more systematic Docker Compose method.

Create a new Directory “wordpress” for WordPress:
```
mkdir ~/wordpress/
```
then move into it:
```
cd ~/wordpress/
```
Create a new folder “.docker” in the newly created folder, this folder will contain all our extra config files:
```
mkdir .docker
```

Configure PHP and Apache for WordPress on Docker

In this “.docker” folder create a file called “uploads.ini”, as the name stats it will provide us control on PHP configurations. Let’s put the content below, you can modify these or addon more based on your project needs –
```
file_uploads = On 
memory_limit = 128M 
upload_max_filesize = 128M 
post_max_size = 128M 
max_execution_time = 120
```

Now create a file in “.docker” folder called “php-apache.conf”, this will set up Virtual Host for our us. Paste the content below, you can modify these or addon more based on your project needs –

# Virtual Hosts 
# 
<VirtualHost *:80> 
    ServerAdmin webmaster@assetlibrary.test 
    DocumentRoot "/var/www/html" 
    ServerName example.wordpress 
    #ErrorLog "logs/example.wordpress-error.log" 
    #CustomLog "logs/example.wordpress-access.log" common 
</VirtualHost>

Create the .env File

Now let’s create a file “.env” in root folder that is “wordpress” this file contains all environment variables DB details etc., and paste the below content into it –

# The table prefix (Required) of the WordPress database used in our website 
# Ex. wp_ 
db_table_prefix=wp_ 
# You can disable any of the plugins that are not needed for development, ex. Bulletproof Security or any SEO plugin. 
# Comma (,) separated list as a string (no spaces), leave blank if you don't want to disable plugins.  
# Ex. plugin-folder-name-1,plugin-folder-name-2 
wp_plugins_to_disable=  
wp_debug_mode=0 
#################################################### 
### Defaults - can be left as it is for basic usage #################################################### 
db_host=assetsdb 
db_user=asset_user 
db_password=asset_pwd 
db_name=asset_db 
db_root_password=root 
db_port=3309

Create the docker-compose.yml File

Now let’s create a file called “docker-compose.yml”, here this is the main file that holds all the docker configurations for us. Paste the content below in the file.
Let’s understand a little about the configuration from this file. As you can see there are 2 heads of services and volumes.
A. There are 3 services db, wordpress, and phpmyadmin –
db: Used official mysql image for this service, you can have a look here.
wordpress: I used an official wordpress image for this service, you can have a look here.
phpmyadmin: I used an official phpmyadmin image for this service, you can have a look here.
B. There is a volume named persistent, that is used for mysql. It means that our DB volume will be persistent whenever we start the container. One can change this name if he wants to, I used persistent to remember its feature.

The docker-compose.yml Content

    version: "3.9" 
    services: 
        db: 
            container_name: assetsdb 
            image: mysql 
            volumes: 
                - ./dump:/docker-entrypoint-initdb.d 
                - persistent:/var/lib/mysql 
            restart: always 
            ports:  
                - '3309:3306' 
            environment: 
                MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD: $db_root_password 
                MYSQL_DATABASE: $db_name 
                MYSQL_USER: $db_user 
                MYSQL_PASSWORD: $db_password 
        wordpress: 
            #depends_on: 
            #  - db 
            links: 
                - db 
            image: wordpress:latest 
            volumes: 
                - ./wp-content:/var/www/html/wp-content 
                - ./apache-logs:/var/log/apache2 
                - ./.docker/php-apache.conf:/etc/apache2/sites-enabled/000-default.conf 
                - ./.docker/uploads.ini:/usr/local/etc/php/conf.d/uploads.ini 
            ports: 
                - "80:80" 
            restart: always 
            environment: 
                WORDPRESS_DB_HOST: $db_host 
                WORDPRESS_DB_USER: $db_user 
                WORDPRESS_DB_PASSWORD: $db_password 
                WORDPRESS_DB_NAME: $db_name 
                WORDPRESS_TABLE_PREFIX: $db_table_prefix 
                WORDPRESS_DEBUG: $wp_debug_mode 
                DISABLED_PLUGINS: $wp_plugins_to_disable 
        phpmyadmin: 
            image: phpmyadmin 
            restart: always 
            ports: 
                - 8089:80 
            links:  
                - db:db 
            environment: 
                MYSQL_USER: $db_user 
                MYSQL_PASSWORD: $db_password 
                MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD: $db_root_password 
    volumes: 
        persistent:

Optional: Add the Virtual Host to Your Hosts File

This is an optional step to follow, that is to add our Virtual Host in Operating System’s host file.
For Windows, with Administrative rights:
Hosts file (hosts) location of the in windows – c:\Windows\System32\Drivers\etc\hosts
For Linux, with root access use following command:
```
sudo nano /etc/hosts
```
Append the following line in the file:
```
127.0.0.1 example.wordpress
```
Now you are ready to use your WordPress installation at the domain http://example.wordpress after running the container and then install WordPress in Docker Container.

Usage

Build, (re)create, start, and attache to containers

You can start the container with the up command in Daemon Mode (by adding -d as an argument). Your WordPress will be running and available at this link http://127.0.0.1:80.

docker-compose up

Starting containers

Start existing containers using the start command –

docker-compose start

Stopping containers

docker-compose stop

Removing containers

The use of down command will stop and remove all the containers –

docker-compose down

Use -v if you need to delete the database volume that is used to maintain the database –

docker-compose down –v

PhpMyAdmin

You will have to visit http://127.0.0.1:8081 to access phpMyAdmin after starting the container.

MySQL default username is root, and the password is the same as supplied in the .env file.

Please go through the official documentation here for more commands in details.

Conclusion

Docker is the best open-source software tool to create containers. Also, its simple environment configuration helps us maintain server resources. When we want simple and ready to use environment on each level of the SDLC (Software Development Life Cycle) Docker is a favorite tool.

In this article, we have learned Docker basics and how we can setup WordPress in Docker using Docker Compose. I hope this article will be helpful, we will glad to help you in any of your queries so please be open to ask any questions in the future.

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Quick Guide to Implement WordPress On Docker in Just 10 Min?