Wordpress on Docker

This small application is an example of how to get Wordpress running with Docker Compose quickly. It's meant for local development and enables debug output by default.

Your application's files will be served from the app/wp-content/ folder that is mapped into the wordpress container. You will need to alter the .gitignore file to explicitly allow your application's plugins and themes to be saved with git.

Getting Started

First make sure the folder you are running this project from has a unique name. Normally, if you name the folder after the project you will be fine. The reason is that docker-compose will name it's containers and data volumes using the name of the parent folder as an identifier.

Once your project is in a folder with the correct name, you can run docker-compose up to start the database and wordpress containers. It takes a bit to initialize the database the first time, but after the db logs stop outputting information for a bit you should be able to go to http://localhost in your browser to view your new Wordpress installation. Follow the setup proceedure to get your site up and running.

You can cancel the docker-compose process at anytime to stop the webserver. Since we're using Compose and a shared database volume, the next time you run docker-compose up the app will be in the same state that it was the last time you used it. No need to setup Wordpress again.

Adding a Theme and Plugins

You can add a theme and plugins to your Wordpress install by changing the files in the app/wp-content/ folder. If you'd like to persist those changes in git, you will need to add lines to the .gitignore file to explicitly add specific files and folders.

For example, adding !/app/wp-content/themes/custom-theme/ will allow you to save the folder app/wp-content/themes/custom-theme/ as part of your git project.

Existing Site Setup

If you'd prefer to get started with an existing site's data, move a copy of the following folders from a backup of your install into this project's app/wp-content folder:

• wp-content/plugins/
• wp-content/uploads/

Only files/folders inside of the app/wp-content/ folder are mounted into the wordpress container.

Existing Database

You will need to create a backup of the production database and mount it into the db containers /docker-entrypoint-initdb.d/ folder before you try to start the project for the first time. You can read more about it from the mariadb container's README but an example of mapping a file on your machine called backup.sql could look like this in your docker-compose.yml file:

    ...

    db:
      image: mariadb:10.1.17
      environment:
        MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD: example
      volumes:
        - dbdata:/var/lib/mysql
        - ./backup.sql:/docker-entrypoint-initdb.d/backup.sql

    ...

You should make sure the following lines are at the top of the sql backup file so that the existing data is loaded into the database this project expects.

CREATE DATABASE IF NOT EXISTS `wp_wordpress`;
USE "wp_wordpress";

If you have already started the project before, you will need to remove the existing database volume so it will be recreated the next time you start the app. The following will shutdown any containers and remove them from the app, then remove the named data volume our database info is stored to.

docker-compose down
docker volume rm wordpressondocker_dbdata