Deployment Overview of Joomla on Server¶

Prerequisites and Basic Requirements¶

To ensure a successful deployment, the following requirements must be met:

• Operating System: Ubuntu.

• Privileges: Root or sudo access is required for installing Docker and managing containers.

• Domain Access: A valid domain configured via DNS to point to the server IP.

• Ports:

• 80 (HTTP) for SSL certificate challenges.

• 443 (HTTPS) for secure web traffic.

• 3306 (MySQL) for database access.

• 8080 (Internal HTTP) for the application service.

FQDN of the final panel on the hostkey.in domain¶

The application is accessible via a specific subdomain generated based on your server ID.

Application installation process¶

The application is deployed using a Docker-based method on Ubuntu systems. The installation involves the following steps:

1. Environment Setup: Installation of the Docker engine and necessary dependencies.

2. Image Retrieval: Pulling the required official images for mysql:8.0 and joomla:latest.

3. Database Provisioning: A MySQL container is initialized with a dedicated database named joomla.

4. Application Deployment: The Joomla container is started and linked to the database container.

5. Proxy Configuration: An Nginx reverse proxy is configured using Docker Compose to handle SSL termination via Certbot and route traffic to the application on port 8080.

Access Rights and Security¶

• Firewall: Ensure that ports 80, 443, and 3306 are open to allow web traffic and database management.

• Container Isolation: The Joomla application communicates with the MySQL database through a dedicated Docker network link.

• SSL/TLS: Secure communication is enforced via Nginx using Let's Encrypt certificates.

Databases¶

The application uses a MySQL 8.0 database container for data persistence.

Docker Containers and Their Deployment¶

The deployment consists of three primary containers:

MySQL Container¶

• Image: mysql:8.0

• Container Name: joomla_db

• Ports: 3306:3306

• Environment Variables:

• MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD: Set via system credentials.

• MYSQL_DATABASE: joomla

• MYSQL_USER: root

• MYSQL_PASSWORD: Set via system credentials.

• Volumes: mysql_data:/var/lib/mysql

• Restart Policy: always

Joomla Container¶

• Image: joomla:latest

• Container Name: joomla

• Ports: 8080:80

• Environment Variables:

• JOOMLA_DB_HOST: joomla_db

• JOOMLA_DB_NAME: joomla

• JOOMLA_DB_USER: joomla_user

• JOOMLA_DB_PASSWORD: Set via system credentials.

• Volumes: joomla_data:/var/www/html

• Restart Policy: always

Nginx Proxy Container¶

• Image: jonasal/nginx-certbot:latest

• Network Mode: host

• Environment Variables:

• CERTBOT_EMAIL: [email protected]

• Volumes:

• nginx_secrets:/etc/letsencrypt

• /data/nginx/user_conf.d:/etc/nginx/user_conf.d

• Restart Policy: unless-stopped

Application Update Instructions¶

To update the Joomla application, perform the following steps to pull the latest images and restart the services:

docker compose -f /root/nginx/compose.yml pull
docker compose -f /root/nginx/compose.yml up -d

Location of configuration files and data¶

Available ports for connection¶

• HTTPS: 443

• MySQL: 3306

• Internal Application Port: 8080

Starting and Stopping the application¶

The containers are configured with restart policies to ensure they start automatically. To manually manage the proxy service:

To stop the proxy:

docker compose -f /root/nginx/compose.yml down

To start the proxy:

docker compose -f /root/nginx/compose.yml up -d