What is reverse proxy?

A reverse proxy allows you to send multiple domain names to the same IP address, and then route the traffic to individual containers. This article will show how to set it up.

Prerequisites

You will need a Docker server with public IP address and a non-root user with sudo privileges. You could install Docker on AWS.

nginx-proxy container

Start by running the following commands on Docker

$ sudo docker network create nginx-proxy
$ sudo docker run -d -p 80:80 --name nginx-proxy --net nginx-proxy -v /var/run/docker.sock:/tmp/docker.sock jwilder/nginx-proxy

This will start the nginx-proxy container, which will automate the configuration of the nginx service for any container started on the nginx-proxy network.

Docker Compose

All Containers must be created using the nginx-proxy network. Using the example docker-compose file below, you must change the following highlighted items:

• db_node_domain: This is a unique db container name for each website
• Passwords: There is a password for MySQL root, and a MySQL wordpress user.
• VIRTUAL_HOST: The domain that you want to route to this Wordpress instance.
• container_name: The two container names will need to be unique for each website.

version: "3"

services:
   my_school_domain:
     image: mysql:5.7
     volumes:
       - db_data:/var/lib/mysql
     restart: always
     environment:
       MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD: PASSWORD
       MYSQL_DATABASE: wordpress
       MYSQL_USER: wordpress
       MYSQL_PASSWORD: PASSWORD
     container_name: wordpress_db

   wordpress:
     depends_on:
       - my_school_domain
     image: wordpress:latest
     expose:
       - 80
     restart: always
     environment:
       VIRTUAL_HOST: my.school.domain.com
       WORDPRESS_DB_HOST: my_school_domain:3306
       WORDPRESS_DB_USER: wordpress
       WORDPRESS_DB_PASSWORD: PASSWORD
     container_name: wordpress
volumes:
    db_data:

networks:
  default:
    external:
      name: nginx-proxy

Run the following command to start this docker-compose stack:

sudo docker-compose up -d

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