Local WordPress Websites with Podman

Podman is a modern, secure, and lightweight tool that helps you package and run applications in isolated environments (containers) on your computer, without needing to be the all-powerful administrator.

I was running my local WordPress setup on Docker Desktop, but then I discovered Podman and switched.

Why did I switch?

Because Podman is fully open-source and I feel comfortable using the terminal to create, starts and turn off my local sites.

I haven’t run into any issues since I started using it, so I don’t think I will change my mind anytime soon.

This is how you use it

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Install Podman via Homebrew

I worked on a Mac so I install and update pretty much all apps via Homebrew

If you have Homebrew installed, the installation process is pretty straight-forward

brew install podman

To make sure everything is working as expected, run this command on the terminal

podman --version

After that you should install Podman Compose

brew install podman-compose

This is how you check the podman-compose version

podman-compose --version

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Create a YAML File

I don’t create the file from scratch, I change a few things form previous working files

I bet you can improve it but this one works well for me

version: '3.8'
services:
  enp_wordpress:
    image: wordpress:latest
    container_name: tlb_wordpress_site
    restart: "no"
    ports:
      - "8078:80"
    environment:
      WORDPRESS_DB_HOST: tlb_db:3306
      WORDPRESS_DB_NAME: tlb_wordpress_db
      WORDPRESS_DB_USER: tlb_user
      WORDPRESS_DB_PASSWORD: tlb_password
    volumes:
      - ./tlb_wordpress_data:/var/www/html
    networks:
      - tlb_net
  enp_db:
    image: mariadb:latest
    container_name: tlb_mariadb_db
    restart: "no"
    environment:
      MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD: tlb_root_password
      MYSQL_DATABASE: tlb_wordpress_db
      MYSQL_USER: tlb_user
      MYSQL_PASSWORD: tlb_password
    volumes:
      - ./tlb_db_data:/var/lib/mysql
    networks:
      - tlb_net
  enp_adminer:
    image: adminer:latest
    container_name: tlb_adminer
    restart: "no"
    ports:
      - "8077:8080"
    networks:
      - tlb_net
  tln_wpcli:
    image: wordpress:cli
    container_name: enp_wpcli
    depends_on:
      - tlb_wordpress
      - tlb_db
    entrypoint: ["wp"]
    tty: true
    stdin_open: true
    restart: "no"
    volumes:
      - ./tlb_wordpress_data:/var/www/html
    environment:
      WORDPRESS_DB_HOST: tlb_db:3306
      WORDPRESS_DB_NAME: tlb_wordpress_db
      WORDPRESS_DB_USER: tlb_user
      WORDPRESS_DB_PASSWORD: enp_password
    networks:
      - tlb_net
volumes:
  enp_wordpress_data:
    driver: local
  enp_db_data:
    driver: local
networks:
  enp_net:
    driver: bridge

When you have your YAML file ready, place it inside the folder where you want to have your database and WordPress installation files

Start Podman

Now, Go to the folder where the YAML file is using via the terminal and run this command

podman-compose up -d

Now go to the local WordPress by visiting the port you specified in the YAML file

https://localhost:8078

You will see a message prompting to choose the language for your WordPress installation and create a WordPress user

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