WordPress with Docker

This page shows you how to deploy a sample WordPress site using Docker.

Before you begin

Follow these instructions to install runsc with Docker. This document assumes that the runtime name chosen is runsc.

Running WordPress

Now, let’s deploy a WordPress site using Docker. WordPress site requires two containers: web server in the frontend, MySQL database in the backend.

Note: This example uses gVisor to sandbox the frontend web server, but not the MySQL database backend. In a production setup, due to the I/O overhead imposed by gVisor, it is not recommended to run your database in a sandbox. The frontend is the critical component with the largest outside attack surface, where gVisor’s security/performance trade-off makes the most sense. See the Production guide for more details.

First, let’s define a few environment variables that are shared between both containers:

export MYSQL_PASSWORD=${YOUR_SECRET_PASSWORD_HERE?}
export MYSQL_DB=wordpress
export MYSQL_USER=wordpress

Next, let’s start the database container running MySQL and wait until the database is initialized:

$ docker run --name mysql -d \
    -e MYSQL_RANDOM_ROOT_PASSWORD=1 \
    -e MYSQL_PASSWORD="${MYSQL_PASSWORD}" \
    -e MYSQL_DATABASE="${MYSQL_DB}" \
    -e MYSQL_USER="${MYSQL_USER}" \
    mysql:5.7

$ docker logs mysql |& grep 'port: 3306  MySQL Community Server (GPL)'

Once the database is running, you can start the WordPress frontend. We use the --link option to connect the frontend to the database, and expose the WordPress to port 8080 on the localhost.

$ docker run --runtime=runsc --name wordpress -d \
    --link mysql:mysql \
    -p 8080:80 \
    -e WORDPRESS_DB_HOST=mysql \
    -e WORDPRESS_DB_USER="${MYSQL_USER}" \
    -e WORDPRESS_DB_PASSWORD="${MYSQL_PASSWORD}" \
    -e WORDPRESS_DB_NAME="${MYSQL_DB}" \
    -e WORDPRESS_TABLE_PREFIX=wp_ \
    wordpress

Now, you can access the WordPress website pointing your favorite browser to http://localhost:8080.

Congratulations! You have just deployed a WordPress site using Docker and gVisor.

What’s next

Learn how to deploy WordPress with Kubernetes or Docker Compose.

Before deploying this to production, see the Production guide for how to take full advantage of gVisor.