Nginx Reverse Proxy Doc

[Klynk]

Hello,

I found a confiuration to easily use nginx as reverse proxy for ssl, maybe this can reduce search time for others.
Thought I would put it here and maybe you can add it to the docs:
This method does not require any modification of the wordpress docker image as well.

server {
    listen 443 ssl http2 default_server;
    listen [::]:443 ssl http2 default_server;

    server_name my-site.com; <-- important

    ( ... )

    location / {
        proxy_set_header Host $server_name; <-- important
        proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Proto https; <-- important
        proxy_pass http://my-wordpress-container; <-- important
    }
}

This was tested using the swag docker image:
https://hub.docker.com/r/linuxserver/swag

[tianon]

If you look for NGINX on https://hub.docker.com/_/wordpress, you'll see:

When running WordPress with TLS behind a reverse proxy such as NGINX which is responsible for doing TLS termination, be sure to set X-Forwarded-Proto appropriately (see "Using a Reverse Proxy" in "Administration Over SSL" in upstream's documentation). No additional environment variables or configuration should be necessary (this image automatically adds the noted HTTP_X_FORWARDED_PROTO code to wp-config.php if any of the above-noted environment variables are specified).

and:

wordpress:<version>-fpm

This variant contains PHP-FPM, which is a FastCGI implementation for PHP. See the PHP-FPM website for more information about PHP-FPM.

In order to use this image variant, some kind of reverse proxy (such as NGINX, Apache, or other tool which speaks the FastCGI protocol) will be required.

Some potentially helpful resources:

• PHP-FPM.org
• simplified example by @md5
• very detailed article by Pascal Landau
• Stack Overflow discussion
• Apache httpd Wiki example

[tianon]

(Also, we don't maintain the "swag" image you've referenced, and have no known relation to it.)

[Klynk]

Hello,

I were using the wordpress image which looks to be apache2.

docker-compose.yaml:

  wordpress:
    container_name: wordpress
    image: wordpress
    restart: always
    environment:
      WORDPRESS_DB_HOST: mysql
      WORDPRESS_DB_USER: root
      WORDPRESS_DB_PASSWORD: ...
      WORDPRESS_DB_NAME: wordpress
    volumes:
      - /docker/wordpress/data/:/var/www/html/
    networks:
     - docker-internal

Without providing the Host header, apache2 would use the Host header provided by nginx which is the name of the container.
Whenever I tried to access the site behind the nginx reverse proxy, it would just redirect me to https://<name_of_container>/...

In my case it redirected me from https://my-site.com/ to https://wordpress/wp-admin which is an invalid host outside the server machine.

What I am suggesting is that the docs be updated, to make it easier for other people trying to use nginx reverse proxy:

I did not see anywhere here which said to set the Host header:
https://hub.docker.com/_/wordpress

I also followed the reverse proxy setup link provided on docker.com:
https://wordpress.org/support/article/administration-over-ssl/#using-a-reverse-proxy

I think this is a better solution than doing request rewrites as suggested in the docs (for nginx).
It also does not require any modification of the wordpress docker image.

[Klynk]

The Host header only seems to be important during the setup of wordpress, as it is using it as the siteurl option in the database.

I were struggeling with the setup process behind a reverse proxy. setting the Host header fixed the problem for me.

1	siteurl	wordpress	yes

[tianon]

Given that our documentation can't be extremely long, we (unfortunately) have to assume a certain level of familiarity with both Docker and WordPress. 😞

Since this is how WordPress itself works generally (being sensitive to/embedding in the database the Host header it receives), I don't know if this is really something we should spell out in extreme detail. 😕

[scyto]

wow this post saved my bacon, i had spent 10 hours trying to get this to work, every single blog, how to article video led me astray - they had different host headers set than the ones here.

as someone utterly new to wordpress (but very familiar with docker and nginx) yes this absolutely needs to be much much better documented

i have never seen a web site so sensitive to the headers in the nginx server directive (most server apps work with minimal issues) and as someone who got very led astray by the many many articles on modifying wp-config.php to make this work, or having to install SSL certs to make this scenario work (as an aside why on earth does this container make it so hard to reuse my existing wildcard cert... none of the plugins help me do that) not to mention every blog out there has diff mix of host headers, but the one here is the ONLY one that works and lets me setup using https://www.myexternaldomain.name (it seems if one sets up suing internal domain name that screws wordpress up too - some very odd design decisions in how word press hard codes protocol specific / machine name specific paths in some places but not others...

For anyone else who arrives here, is my example server section that worked.

server {
   server_name             www.myexternaldomainname.com;
    listen                  32802 ssl http2;
    listen                  [::]:32802 ssl http2;
    include                /etc/nginx/block-exploits.conf;  
    access_log           syslog:server=192.168.1.30,tag=wordpress,severity=error custom;
    access_log		syslog:server=127.0.0.1:12000,tag=http,severity=warn main_ext;

    location /  {
        proxy_set_header              Host                    $server_name; 
        proxy_set_header              X-Forwarded-Proto          https; 
	proxy_pass                    http://docker01.myinternadomain.com:8080;
                }
}

[tianon]

Unfortunately, we really don't have the space on Docker Hub's image descriptions to extensively document nor the bandwidth to maintain such documentation. Hopefully this thread serves as a good entrypoint for future users struggling with this.

For further help/discussion, I would suggest trying a dedicated support forum, such as the Docker Community Forums, the Docker Community Slack, or Stack Overflow.