Wordpress

Overview

I am using a devcontainer to work on a Wordpress site locally. My current setup runs these services:

wordpress

An Apache server, as well as a devcontainer that inludes WP-CLI, with a local source directory added as bind mount.

db

A MySQL server, with its database stored on a Docker volume.

pma

A PhpMyAdmin server, to manage the database(s).

Configuration

Directory structure

Note

I have seen different hosting providers offer ways to deploy a git repository to a website. However, this typically "disconnects" the repository from the files themselves.

I prefer a scenario where my hosted Wordpress site automatically installs security updates. With ssh access, I can then commit those changes to the repository.

Docker configuration

Docker Desktop reads the .env file when starting up services. These variables can then be passed to a container.

Warning

When using Docker Desktop on Linux, directories and files mounted into a container are owned by user root.

Docker Desktop maps between the local user on the host, and root in the container.

However, the Apache server in the container runs as user www-data. It is therefore not possible to install or upgrade Wordpress or its plugins from the Wordpress admin interface.

Therefore, VS Code accesses the devcontainer as root too.

The WP-CLI utility makes it possible to do code maintenance on Wordpress and plugins. This requires the --allow-root option.

wp --allow-root plugin install hello-dolly