What This Repo is For

⚠️ Not tested on Windows.

This repo is both for dockerized local development and production deployment of WordPress websites. It is for those of us who prefer running MySQL, PHP, and Adminer (an alternative to PHP MyAdmin) in docker containers rather than installing everything on the host computer. It won't run out of box -- you need to complete all the steps below in order to start using.

How to Use (Overview)

This repo uses Docker containers and Docker Compose to run everything, so if these sound odd to you, better do some reading on Docker first.

To wire up everything you will need to:

1. Create an .env file and fill in the necessary environment variables in it (details below).

2. Copy your website's wp-content folder into this repo's rooot directory.

3. Import your WordPress website's database via Adminer on port 9500, then update your website's home and siteurl options accordingly.

Once everything is set up, start and stop your project with docker-compose up -d and docker-compose down.

How to fill in the .env file

Variables defined in the .env file are used in the following files: docker-compose.yml and Dockerfile-wordpress.

Variable	Default value	Description
WP_CONFIG_IMPORT_PATH	[none]	Must start with /wp-content. Providing this variable's value is mandatory. The file's content found by this path will be imported into the local website's wp-config.php file. It is to override all the values found in wp-config.php rather than editing the file. Normally I keep the file with the website's custom theme.
WP_VERSION	6.3.1	WordPress version to pull from Docker
PROJECT_NAME	dev	Must be lowercase. A string that will prefix all the Docker images, containers and volumes built in this project
WORDPRESS_PORT	9000	Choose a port to access the WordPress website locally. E.g. http://localhost:9000
ADMINER_PORT	9500	Choose a port to access Adminer (an alternative to PHP MyAdmin).
DB_NAME	wordpress	Set a database name
DB_USER	wordpress	Set a database user name
DB_PASSWORD	wordpress	Set a database user's password

Setting the WP_CONFIG_IMPORT_PATH variable's value in the .env file is mandatory. The rest have fallback values.

ElasticSearch

In addition to the WordPress website and it's SQL database, you can also start a local ElasticSearch cluster by uncommenting all the commented rows in docker-compose.yml.

Authentication is disabled for ElasticSearch. It is meant for connecting via ElasticPress plugin as a Third-Party/Self-Hosted cluster by providing the following address as Elastic Host URL: http://{PROJECT_NAME}_elasticsearch:9200. dev is the fallback value for PROJECT_NAME, so the URL is http://dev_elasticsearch:9200 by default.

Nginx example

server {
    server_name {{ BASE_URL }};
    location / {
        proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:{{ PORT }}/;

        proxy_set_header    Host                $host;
        proxy_set_header    X-Forwarded-For     $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
        proxy_set_header    X-Forwarded-Proto   $scheme;
        proxy_set_header    Accept-Encoding     "";
        proxy_set_header    Proxy               "";
    }
}