Simple Wordpress DEV environment with docker compose

This repository provides a simple and lazy approach to setting up a local WordPress development environment using Docker Compose. With just one command, you can get a fully functional WordPress instance complete with WP-CLI, MariaDB, and PHPMyAdmin, along with autogenerated aliases for easy management. A second command allows you to source these aliases for convenience. This setup is intended solely for local development and is not secure for production use.

My context

• I needed a quick way to get a WordPress instance up and running locally.
• I tried a few alternatives, nd they were all either too complicated or just didn't work when I followed the README, so here is my approach.
• I also wanted some quick commands for specific tasks, such as backup, wp-cli and docker compose.

This is my approach to solve this.

Warning: This approach is only for local dev. It is not secure, and you should not use it for Production anywhere. You have been warned.

TLDR

chmod +x start.sh
chmod +x setup.sh
./start,sh
source ./alias.sh

How does this work

There are 3 important files:

1. docker-compose.yml: here is where everything happens. It basically does the following:
   • gets the latest versions of the official containers for WordPress, MariaDB, PHPMyAdmin and WP-CLI.
   • creates a database with name wordpress, user and password root.
   • creates a WordPress instance with that database.
2. setup.sh: this is mostly for comfort. It does the following:
   • checks if you have an old docker-compose or a new docker compose version and uses it.
   • sets UID and GID ENV Vars with yours, and adds them to the .env file.
     • I'm still playing with this. The idea was to use the same local UID and GID for the container, but if I do that the container cannot use the folder. I just defaulted to chmod 777.
3. start.sh: creates the directory for WordPress, sets permissions to 777 (I told you this is not secure) and starts docker compose.
4. alias.sh: this is autogenerated when you run either setup.sh or start.sh. Then you can source ./alias.sh to get the following aliases:
   • dc for docker compose in the version that you have
   • wpcli for wp-cli commands
   • wpbackup to make a db dump to ./backups
   • ẁpdown to make a db dump and then a docker down -v to remove containers and volume after making a backup

How to use

chmod +x setup.sh
chmod +x start.sh
./start.sh

How to use the aliases

alias dc

# Bring up the services
dc up -d

# Stop the services
dc down

# Stop the services and remove volumes
dc down -v

# View the status of the services
dc ps

alias wp-cli

NOTE: The alias has --allow-root. This means you will run wp-cli as root.

# Check the WordPress version
wpcli core version

# Install a plugin
wpcli plugin install hello-dolly --activate

# Update WordPress core
wpcli core update

# Create a new post
wpcli post create --post_title='My New Post' --post_content='This is the content of the post.' --post_status=publish

You can check the available commands at https://developer.wordpress.org/cli/commands/

alias wpbackup

wpbackup uses wpcli to create a database dump in ./backups

wpdown

wpdown makes a database dump in ./backups, then runs docker down -v to remove the containers and volumes.

Uninstall/ Remove

If you don't need this anymore, just remove the containers and volumes, and remove the folders.

# this removes all the volumes and databases, but does not delete the files in ./wordpress
dc down -v