Few questions how to use Docker with regarding to web apps (Multiple WordPress, NextCloud, VPN etc.)

General
1

Hi! My name is Kimberley and I’m new here :blush: (is there anywhere a introduction fora?)

In recent weeks I have started with 2 Raspberry Pi4s and I am very happy with them. What I wanted to achieve is my own apache server with different websites and I succeeded! By making a lot of mistakes and especially starting over a lot and I really mean going through all the steps from the beginning.

Then a friend came up with the tip to try Docker, so I set to work on that. Again it took me hours or even days with a lot of high blood pressure and stress, what a lot it takes to understand that! Respect for everyone who thinks this is a piece of cake! Finally learned a lot, but now I also got a lot of questions, see below;

1.a) Have a Docker container containing Biarms / Mysql, Wordpress and PHPMyAdmin. On my first Raspberry everything runs without a container and because it has several websites running on it, I had to point domain names to the correct folder in file /etc/apache2/sites-available/000-default.conf. But how is that going with Docker container websites? Where do I indicate which domain should go to which Docker container?

1.b) Is it smarter to create a new Docker container per website or is it smarter to host all websites in 1 Docker container?

  1. Now have a NextCloud with Biarms / MySQL running in Docker container, just wondering if I can view the files without opening the Docker container. Where are they stored and can I possibly ensure that they are stored outside the Docker container? (Wordpress files can be viewed and edited outside the container, exactly what I would like with NextCloud)

  2. Is it smart to place different images in 1 Docker container or do you have to grab one Docker container per images? What is Wisdom?

What I ultimately want is my own VPN, cloud storage or NAS, web server with different websites and preferably with a control panel for the websites to be configured. What is the logical structure in Docker here?

3

Can’t find an answer to the question 1.b) is running individual container smarter than creating docker-compose.yml with serveral images (do I said that correct?) Like this: (I’m working with VSCode)

v CONTAINERS 
  v wordpress site one
     v mysql
     v phpmyadmin
     v wordpress
  v wordpress site two
     v mysql
     v phpmyadmin
     v wordpress
  v wordpress site three
     v mysql
     v phpmyadmin
     v wordpress
  v nextcloud
     v mysql
     v nextcloud

or should I work with individual containers?

v CONTAINERS
   v apache2
   v mysql
   v php7
   v phppmyadmin
   v wordpress site one
   v wordpress site two
   v wordpress site three
   v nextcloud

or doesn’t matters at all?

The thing about Persistent data, is it correct when I say that the data is not accessible via Rasp OS, but can be reached in all kinds of ways and therefore more secure?

4

The layout pretty much depends on your needs and the ressources at hand.

The suggestion is to use a reverse proxy as entrypoint and use fpm versions of the image to save ressources. I would definitly go with a distinct container per site, as the intances won’t be tightly coupled.

Though, you might want to stick with a single mysql instance and use a different database per site container.

May I suggest this exceptional free self-paced docker training? Introduction to Containers . The number of slides might seem a lot, but many of them can be rushed thru - they are definitly worh the time!. Make sure to do the hands-on exercises.