Easy Multi-domain Docker Server

This is an easy to use nginx server designed to handle multiple domains as docker services.

Now I am concerned what you heard is

This is an nginx server designed to handle multiple domains as docker services.

but what I said was

This is an easy to use nginx server designed to handle multiple domains as docker services.

It is seriously so easy that I hope you wore brown pants, because you are about to be sh!tting them.

It uses jwilder/nginx-proxy and the Let's Encrypt companion application JrCs/docker-letsencrypt-nginx-proxy-companion. To make setting up a multi domain server with ssl easy as hell.

Requirements

• A server (Tested with Ubuntu 16.04 and 18.04)
• git
• Docker
• docker-compose
• That is it. No seriously, that is it.

Usage

First Run

Obviously, clone this repo where you want it.

On first run, you need to setup the nginx-proxy network. Do this by running the following command. You only need to do this once.

docker network create nginx-proxy

Now you need to start the reverse proxy. In a terminal, cd into the nginx-proxy folder and run

docker-compose up -d

The nginx proxy server is now running. You don't need to do this ever again. It is done and you are completly setup and ready to go. That is all. No configuration needed. It autoconfigures.

Setup Website

A complete example for running a wordpress website is located in websites/example.com. You should be able to figure it out from there but here are some tips.

• The folder name doesnt matter, but naming it yourdomain.tdl is a good naming convention. Hell, it doesnt even need to be in this folder, just on the same computer. But I like structure.
• You don't need to do anything with the ports command. The nginx-proxy server handles all of that for you and keeps your port from being exposed.
• You don't need to setup ssl or any nginx config, it happens automagically

Important

You must use the nginx-proxy network we setup in First Run on all sites. Add it to the bottom of your docker-compose.yml file like this.

networks:
  default:
    external:
      name: nginx-proxy

You have to set the enviroment variables to tell nginx-proxy how to setup your site

services:
  service_name:
    environment:
      VIRTUAL_HOST: example.com # the incomming domain name for this site
      VIRTUAL_PORT: 80 # the port your application exposes
      LETSENCRYPT_HOST: example.com # the domain name to issue cert to, same as VIRTUAL_HOST
      LETSENCRYPT_EMAIL: [email protected] # this email can be any of your emails. Not domain specific

You need to expose your port to the network so it can be autorouted. You can expose the same port as many times as you want. For instance, you can have 20 sites that expose port 80. It doesn't matter, it will autoroute. It must be the same port set in the VIRTUAL_PORT enviroment variable.

services:
  service_name:
    expose:
    - 80 # the port your application exposes

If you want your site to auto reboot on crash and auto startup, be sure to add a restart policy.

services:
  service_name:
    restart: unless-stopped
    # OR not AND
    # restart: always

Activate websites

To activate your sites, first point your domain to your server, then cd into the folder with it's docker-compose.yml file and run

docker-compose up -d

nginx-proxy will detect it on the network, set it up, issue an ssl cert, autorenew its certs, and activate it.

To stop the service, cd into the folder and run.

docker-compose down

The service will stop and nginx-proxy will detect this and remove it's service.

Development

I'm a developer and I assume you are as well since you are here. I need a dev environment close to my production environment. So for your dev machine, you can do almost an identical setup but with a .local or, my preference, a .dev domain name. Just use the nginx-proxy-dev container instead of the nginx-proxy one. Still do the initial network setup, and make a separate website folder with a .dev extension instead of .com or whatever tdl you are using.

There are two scripts in the root of this project named devdomain.sh and devdomain-mac.sh. Unfortunately, Mac uses a different version of grep, so on a mac, use that one. This script allows you to add your custom domains to the host file easily.

To add:

sh devdomain.sh add yourdomain.dev

To remove

sh devdomain.sh remove yourdomain.dev

Now when you go to yourdomain.dev on your computer your host file will route you to nginx-proxy-dev and it will pick it up and route you to your site.

For windows, the setup is a little harder. You need to download a decent development operating system like Ubuntu and install it. Be sure to completely overwrite your windows installation as you shouldn't be using it ever again. I am serious. If you are developing anything other than windows desktop applications, you need to get the hell off windows. Docker sucks on it. Or more accurately, It sucks at running docker and everything else.

Logs

To see what the hell is going on, cd into the nginx-proxy folder and run

docker-compose logs

If you want to watch the logs, run.

docker-compose logs -f

Simple

Pull requests

Yeah, go for it. Make it better, submit pull request.

Questions and comments

Any questions, you can just post them in the issues section. Until github builds in a decent discussion platform there is not a good other option. I don't see why people get bent out of shape when people do this. It is the only way to ask questions on github currently and everyone can search the issues to see them.