Run Multiple WordPress Sites On a Docker Host Production Ready

In this blog post, we will learn how to run multiple WordPress sites in production on a Linux Docker host.

Environment

In my case, I have a CentOS 7.7 Azure VM  with Docker installed. The domain name is pointing directly to the VM external IP address.

Setup

The WordPress environment is configured using 4 containers as follow:

• Nginx reverse proxy container – This container allows us to run multiple WordPress instances on a single host.

• Let Encrypt container – This container handles the SSL configuration for my DevOpsRunTime.com domain.

• MySQL container – This is the MySQL database server that runs on a single container

• WordPress container – This is the WordPress container 

 Notes

To add more WordPress sites, simply add one MySQL container and one WordPress container.

Create Network

The first step will be creating a Docker network that will allow all the containers to communicate.

docker network create dockerwordpressnet

Containers

Below, are the configurations of all the for containers.

Nginx

I will start with deploying Nginx reverse proxy container using the following command.

Note: You can see that the container is using the new network (–net)

docker run --name nginx-proxy --net dockerwordpressnet -p 80:80 -p 443:443 -v ~/certs:/etc/nginx/certs -v /etc/nginx/vhost.d -v /usr/share/nginx/html -v /var/run/docker.sock:/tmp/docker.sock:ro --label com.github.jrcs.letsencrypt_nginx_proxy_companion.nginx_proxy -d --restart always jwilder/nginx-proxy

Letsencrypt

The 2nd container will run the letsencrypt container.

docker run --name letsencrypt-nginx-proxy-companion --net dockerwordpressnet -v ~/certs:/etc/nginx/certs:rw -v /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock:ro --volumes-from nginx-proxy -d --restart always jrcs/letsencrypt-nginx-proxy-companion

MySQL

The command below, will deploy the MySQL container.

Note: Each WordPress website will use s dedicated MySQL container, make change the name for each new website.

Please set a strong password for the root account and for the MySQL DB.

docker run --name mysqldb01 --net dockerwordpressnet -v mysqldb01:/var/lib/mysql -e MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD=SETROOTPASSWORD -e MYSQL_DATABASE=db1 -e MYSQL_USER=db1user -e MYSQL_PASSWORD=MYQLPASSWORD -d --restart always mysql:5.7

WordPress

The last container will deploy WordPress using the latest WordPress image.

Note: Make sure the username and password for the DB match the values of the MySQL container.

You also need to specify the domain name in the environment values as shown below.

docker run --name devopsruntime --net dockerwordpressnet -v devopsruntime:/var/www/html -v ~/uploads.ini:/usr/local/etc/php/conf.d/uploads.ini -e WORDPRESS_DB_HOST=mysqldb01:3306 -e WORDPRESS_DB_NAME=db1 -e WORDPRESS_DB_USER=db1user -e WORDPRESS_DB_PASSWORD=MYQLPASSWORD -e VIRTUAL_HOST=www.devopsruntime.com -e LETSENCRYPT_HOST=www.devopsruntime.com -e LETSENCRYPT_EM[email protected]  -d --restart always wordpress

Configure

After I deploy the four containers, I will head to the URL and run the setup wizard.

As you can see the blog is up and running.

More Notes

To add a second website run another two containers and change the values.