How to create a Wordpress Stack using Docker Compose

Wordpress is an open source content management system (CMS) written in PHP and it’s the easiest and most powerful blogging and website CMS in the world. Dockerizing the Wordpress stack will help you to set up a Wordpress stack in just a few minutes instead of installing it from scratch. In this tutorial, we will cover the steps needed for setting up a Wordpress stack using docker-compose.

Prerequisites

Before continuing with this tutorial you need to met the following prerequisites:

Make sure that you are logged into your Ubuntu machine as a user with sudo privileges
Docker installed. You can use the instructions from How to install docker on Ubuntu 19.04
Docker Compose already installed. Follow the instructions from How to install Docker Compose on Ubuntu 19.04

Create the environment

Before creating the Docker Compose file we will create a directory which will be used to deploy the application.

mkdir ~/wordpress

Now we will switch to the wordpress directory and start creating the the stack.

cd ~/wordpress

Configure the Stack

Once you are into the wordpress directory, we are ready to create a docker compose file and configure the stack. First we will create the docker compose file:

touch docker-compose.yml

Now open the file and paste the following configuration:

version: '3.3'

services:
  db:
    image: mysql:5.7
    container_name: db
    restart: always
    volumes:
      - db_data:/var/lib/mysql
    env_file: 
      - .env
    environment:
      MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD: ${MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD}
      MYSQL_DATABASE: wordpress
      MYSQL_USER: ${MYSQL_USER}
      MYSQL_PASSWORD: ${MYSQL_PASSWORD}

  wordpress:
    image: wordpress
    container_name: wordpress
    restart: always
    volumes:
      - ./wp_data:/var/www/html
    ports:
      - "52:80"
    environment:
      WORDPRESS_DB_HOST: db:3306
      WORDPRESS_DB_NAME: wordpress
      WORDPRESS_DB_USER: ${MYSQL_USER}
      WORDPRESS_DB_PASSWORD: ${MYSQL_PASSWORD}
    depends_on:
       - db
  
  phpmyadmin:
    image: phpmyadmin/phpmyadmin
    container_name: phpmyadmin
    restart: always
    ports:
      - '80:80'
    environment:
      PMA_HOST: db
      MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD: ${MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD}
    depends_on:
      - db
volumes:
    db_data:

Now lets explain the docker compose file step by step:

The first line is showing the Compose file version.
Next, we are defining three services, db, wordpress and phpmyadmin. We are using phpmyadmin, so you can simply manage your databases.

The db service:

We are using mysql:5.7 image. If the image is not present on the local system it will be pulled from the Docker Hub repo.
Uses the restart always policy. Whenever the Docker service is restarted, containers using the always policy will be restarted regardless of whether they were running or now.
Creates persistent volume dbdata.
Defines the environment variables for the mysql:5.7 image which will be stored in the .env file separately.

The wordpress service:

Uses the wordpress image.
Uses the restart always policy. Whenever the Docker service is restarted, containers using the always policy will be restarted regardless of whether they were running or now.
Mounts the wp_data directory on the host to /var/www/html inside the container.
Expose port 80 on the container to port 52 on the host machine.
Defines the environment variables for the wordpress image which will be stored in the .env file separately.
depends_on instruction is defining the dependency between the two services. So db will be started before wordpress.

The phpmyadmin service:

Uses the phpmyadmin image.
Uses the restart always policy. Whenever the Docker service is restarted, containers using the always policy will be restarted regardless of whether they were running or now.
Expose port 80 on the container to port 80 on the host machine.
Defines the environment variables for the wordpress image which will be stored in the .env file separately.
depends_on instruction is defining the dependency between the two services. So db will be started before phpmyadmin.

Next, lets create the env file and store the variables:

touch .env

Open the file and put the following variables:

MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD=changethepass
MYSQL_USER=changeuserpass
MYSQL_PASSWORD=passshouldbechanged

We successfully configured the stack, next is to deploy and build the images.

Deploy the stack

To build the docker images execute the following command:

docker-compose up

Please note that this command should be executed in the same directory where the docker compose file is.

Check if the containers are up and running with the following command:

docker ps

To access the wordpress instance, type in browser:

http://localhost:52

To access the phpmyadmin instance, type in browser:

http://localhost

To stop the containers, type the following command:

docker-compose stop

To remove the containers, type the following command:

docker-compose down

Conclusion

In this tutorial we shown you How to create a Wordpress Stack using Docker Compose and if you have some further questions or information please put a comment in the box below.