🧱 WordPress Dev Setup (Dockerized)

This repository offers a minimal Docker-based setup for WordPress development, enabling you to spin up a local environment quickly without complex configuration.

🚀 Quick Start

1. Clone the Repository

git clone https://github.com/djuric/wordpress-docker-setup myproject
cd myproject

2. Set Up Your .env File

Create a .env file in the project root and configure the following variables:

PROJECT_NAME=yourproject
WORDPRESS_PORT=80
PHPMYADMIN_PORT=8081
MYSQL_PORT=3306

WORDPRESS_DB_USER=exampleuser
WORDPRESS_DB_PASSWORD=examplepass
WORDPRESS_DB_NAME=exampledb

IMPORTANT: Your PROJECT_NAME needs to be the same as the name of your project folder. Docker containers and volumes will be named based on this prefix.

🔍 What Each Variable Does

• PROJECT_NAME
  A unique name for your project. Used as a prefix for Docker containers, volumes, and networks to avoid conflicts with other projects.

• WORDPRESS_PORT
  The port on your host machine used to access the WordPress site.

  Default is 80, but you can change it to something like 8080.

  Note: Changing this to something other than 80 will break network connection between host machine and container. This means that tools like curl will not work (hence cron jobs will not work either).

• PHPMYADMIN_PORT
  The port used to access phpMyAdmin (database management UI).
  Example: http://localhost:8081

• MYSQL_PORT
  The port exposed on your host for connecting to the database.
  Useful if you plan to connect with tools like DBeaver or MySQL Workbench.

• WORDPRESS_DB_USER
  The username for accessing the database.

• WORDPRESS_DB_PASSWORD
  The password for accessing the database.

• WORDPRESS_DB_NAME
  The name of the database.

Note: If you're running multiple instances of this setup, make sure each one uses a unique set of ports (e.g. 8080/8081/3306 for one, 8090/8091/3307 for another).

3. Start the Project

Instead of using docker compose manually (which requires extra flags to load environment variables), use the included start.sh script:

./start.sh

This will:

• Load environment variables from .env
• Apply a unique Docker Compose project name using PROJECT_NAME

🔀 Running Multiple Instances

To run multiple instances of this Docker setup (e.g., for different WordPress projects), you'll need to assign unique port numbers for each one to avoid conflicts.

✅ Guidelines for Choosing Ports

• Use port numbers above 1024 (to avoid reserved system ports).
• Ensure the ports are not already in use by another process or Docker container.
• Avoid commonly used ports like 5432 (PostgreSQL), 6379 (Redis), etc., unless you're sure they're not active.

🧩 Example Port Assignments

Instance	WordPress	phpMyAdmin	MySQL
siteA	8080	8081	3306
siteB	8090	8091	3307
siteC	8100	8101	3308

🛠 WP-CLI Support

This setup includes WP-CLI preinstalled in the WordPress container. You can run WP-CLI commands directly from your terminal using the provided ./wp.sh script.

Then you can run commands like:

./wp user list
./wp plugin install akismet --activate
./wp post list

✅ No need to type docker compose exec — the script handles it for you.

❗ Make sure the project is up and running via ./start.sh before using WP-CLI commands.

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📥 Importing the Database

You can import a .sql file into your running MySQL container using the included mysql-import.sh script.

Run the import command:

./mysql-import.sh path/to/your-database-dump.sql

This will:

• Copy the SQL file into the running MySQL container
• Run the import inside the container using credentials from your .env file

💡 If you're importing a full website, make sure the database you are importing into already exists and is completely empty (i.e., contains no tables).

🔄 Update URLs After Import (Search & Replace)

After importing a database, you may need to update old URLs (e.g., from a production domain to localhost).

Use WP-CLI's search-replace command:

./wp search-replace 'https://old-domain.com' 'http://localhost'

📤 Exporting the Database

You can export your project's current database using the included mysql-export.sh script.

Run the export command:

./mysql-export.sh

This will:

• Export the contents of your database using the credentials from .env
• Save the dump as a .sql file in the project root directory