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cloud.gov PHP Example Application: WordPress

This is an example application which can be run on cloud.gov using the CloudFoundry PHP buildpack.

This is an out-of-the-box implementation of WordPress. It's an example of how common PHP applications can easily be run on cloud.gov

  1. Installation
  2. Administering your WordPress site
  3. Recommendations

Installation

Please note: If you are deploying from a Windows machine, you may encounter issues with Windows changing the file line endings.

To avoid this issue, follow these instructions to convert the file line endings from Windows-style to UNIX-style.

If you are having this issue, you will see errors like /bin/bash^M: bad interpreter: No such file or directory in your application logs.

  1. Clone this repo.

    git clone https://github.com/18F/cf-ex-wordpress.git cf-ex-wordpress
cd cf-ex-wordpress

  2. Create a service instance of a MySQL Database:

    # note: if this is for a production environment, use one of the plans with `-redundant` in the plan name for better availability
# run `cf marketplace -e aws-rds` to see available database plans
cf create-service aws-rds micro-mysql mysql-db

    See the cloud.gov website page on database services. for more information.

  3. Create a service instance of S3 storage:

    # run `cf marketplace -e s3` to see available S3 plans
cf create-service s3 basic-public s3-storage

    Note: cloud.gov does not have persistent local storage so you'll need to rely on S3 for storing any files uploaded to WordPress. Sandbox accounts cannot create S3 storage services. Consider upgrading to a prototyping package if you need to do this.

    See the cloud.gov website page on S3 services for more information.

  4. Copy the example manifest.yml.example to manifest.yml. Edit the manifest.yml file:

    • Change the name and host attributes to something unique for your site.
    • Under services: change
      • mysql-db to the name of your MySQL service you created in Step 2.
      • s3-storage to the name of your S3 service you created in Step 3. Or delete this line if you're not using S3.
    • The memory and disk allocations in the example manifest.yml file should be sufficient for WordPress but may need to be adjusted depending on your specific needs.

  5. Deploy the app with a no start command:

    cf push --no-start

    This will download and install WordPress, configure it to use your MySQL service, and install all your plugins and themes but will not start the application on cloud.gov.

  6. Copy the example setup.sh.example to setup.sh and then:

  7. Update setup.sh and replace the placeholder YOUR-KEY with the values from the WordPress Secret Key Generator.

  8. Update setup.sh to set the values that will be used when installing your site:

    • SITE_NAME: name for your Wordpress site
    • SITE_URL: URL for your website, which should either be the URL ending in app.cloud.gov printed by CloudFoundry after cf push or your custom agency domain (e.g. agency.gov)
    • ACCOUNT_NAME: name for your site's admin user account
    • ACCOUNT_EMAIL: email address for your admin user account
    • ACCOUNT_PASS: password for your site's admin user account

  9. Make sure to chmod +x the file:

    chmod +x setup.sh

  10. Run it and pass in the name of your app that you set in manifest.yml:

    ./setup.sh mywordpress

    This will set these values as environmental values in the cloud.gov environment. Note - Make sure to include the leading and closing ' characters to avoid errors escaping special characters.

  11. Push the Wordpress application to CloudFoundry:

    cf push

    On cf push:

    • The server downloads and runs the PHP buildpack which installs HTTPD and PHP
    • The buildpack includes the composer extension, so it sees compser.json and installs the defined packages from there, including Wordpress, the WP CLI, and some plugins/themes
    • A custom script copies the Wordpress files installed by composer into the web root for the application and installs Wordpress using the environment variables configured in setup.sh
    • The platform starts the application

    Now you have a WordPress site. You should see output like this in your terminal:

    App started


OK

App mywordpress was started using this command `$HOME/.bp/bin/start`

Showing health and status for app mywordpress in org sandbox-gsa / space your.name as [email protected]...
OK

requested state: started
instances: 1/1
usage: 128M x 1 instances
urls: my-special-wordpress.app.cloud.gov
last uploaded: Tue Sep 26 22:21:49 UTC 2017
stack: cflinuxfs4
buildpack: https://github.com/cloudfoundry/php-buildpack

    If you go to the URL listed under urls you should see a fresh WordPress site.

  12. Verify S3 connection:

    This demo uses the Human Made S3 Uploads plugin, which automatically uploads files from your WordPress install to S3 and rewrites the URLs for you. The app requires no configuration. The access keys, secret key, and bucket name are stored in the environment configuration and read by the plugin on start.

    cf run-task mywordpress --command "wp s3-uploads verify --path='/home/vcap/app/htdocs/'"

    To see that the task ran, run cf logs APP_NAME --recent and you should see a line that says:

    OUT Success: Looks like your configuration is correct.

  13. Log in and test:

    To test everything is correct, log in to your WordPress site with the credentials you specified when running wp core install in the previous step. You should be able to do any admin activities including creating a new post and uploading a media file to it.

Administering your WordPress site

Updating WordPress

By default, this example will the latest version of WordPress specified in composer.json and composer.lock. To update WordPress or pick up a new version of the PHP builpack, run:

composer update johnpbloch/wordpress

Then, re-push your application:

cf push

We do not recommend using the wp-admin interface to manage updates to your site.

Note: We recommend running the latest stable version of WordPress on production sites. The latest version typically contains important security updates. If you pin the WordPress version, you will need to manually increment this value to upgrade your install. Make sure you follow the update schedule on wordpress.org to keep up with important security and maintenance releases.

Themes and plugins

The Cloud Foundry platform builds apps with ephemeral local storage. This means any changes made to local files on your app will get deleted whenever you push or restage the app. Make sure your plugins and themes remain installed by installing them through the composer.json file using composer require.

By default, these plugins/themes are included:

  • S3-Uploads: Integrates with S3 for storing uploaded site files
  • Akismet: Default spam protection plugin for Wordpress
  • Create Wordpress theme

For plugins or themes you'd normally be able to install from the admin interface, you can list them by name and the version that you want installed. For anything not available through WordPress directly, you can use composer to require packages from GitHub. For example, if your site's theme is one you've custom-developed, you can follow those instructions to require it via composer.json.

As with WordPress Core, make sure to watch for and install updates for the plugins/themes that contain security fixes.

Running WP-CLI commands

We recommend using Cloud Foundry's "tasks" to run wp-cli commands. To do this, make sure to specify the WordPress path relative to the app directory. Here's how you would run wp core version on your cloud.gov container:

cf run-task APP_NAME --command "wp core version --path='/home/vcap/app/htdocs/'"

That should print something like:

Creating task for app APP_NAME in org ORG_NAME / space SPACE_NAME as USER_NAME...
OK

Task has been submitted successfully for execution.
task name:   98680974
task id:     30

Run cf logs APP_NAME --recent to see the results and look for the task name to see the results. The task will create a container, run your command and then destroy the container after the task exits.

2017-09-27T10:54:44.36-0600 [APP/TASK/98680974/0] OUT Creating container
2017-09-27T10:54:44.81-0600 [APP/TASK/98680974/0] OUT Successfully created container
2017-09-27T10:54:51.50-0600 [APP/TASK/98680974/0] OUT 6.2.2
2017-09-27T10:54:51.52-0600 [APP/TASK/98680974/0] OUT Stopping instance 13abb9c4-23fe-4fc6-8b72-dc6676be26b8
2017-09-27T10:54:51.51-0600 [APP/TASK/98680974/0] OUT Exit status 0
2017-09-27T10:54:51.52-0600 [APP/TASK/98680974/0] OUT Destroying container
2017-09-27T10:54:52.92-0600 [APP/TASK/98680974/0] OUT Successfully destroyed container

Consider using continuous integration to run any tasks that should be run every time you push or restage your app or that you want to run at regular time intervals.

Recommendations

  1. You will probably want to connect your app to some kind of SMTP service to send transactional emails like password resets.
  2. The S3 Uploads plugin rewrites the URLs used by WordPress but does not flush the rewrite rules table automatically. To get around this, you can run a task to flush the rewrite rules after every cf push of your app. You can also automate those tasks by using continuous integration.

License

See LICENSE for license details.