At Jijutm.com, I wanted to deliver a fast and reliable experience for our readers. To achieve this, I have implemented a containerized approach using Docker and Jenkins for managing this WordPress site. This article delves into the details of our setup and how it contributes to exceptional website performance.
Why Containers?
Traditional server management often involves installing software directly on the operating system. This can lead to dependency conflicts, versioning issues, and a complex environment. Docker containers provide a solution by encapsulating applications with all their dependencies into isolated units. This offers several advantages:
Consistency: Docker ensures a consistent environment regardless of the underlying operating system. This simplifies development, testing, and deployment.
Isolation: Applications running in containers are isolated from each other, preventing conflicts and improving security.
Portability: Docker containers are portable across different environments, making it easy to migrate your application between development, staging, and production.
The Containerized Architecture
This WordPress site leverages three Docker containers:
- Nginx: A high-performance web server that serves the content of this website efficiently.
- PHP-FPM: A FastCGI process manager that executes PHP code for dynamic content generation in WordPress.
- MariaDB: A robust and popular open-source relational database management system that stores the WordPress data and is fully compatible with MySQL.
These containers work together seamlessly to deliver a smooth user experience. Nginx acts as the front door, handling user requests and routing them to the PHP-FPM container for processing. PHP-FPM interacts with the MariaDB container to retrieve and update website data.
Leveraging Jenkins for Automation
While Docker simplifies application management, automating deployments is crucial for efficient workflow. This is where Jenkins comes in. Jenkins is an open-source automation server that we use to manage the build and deployment process for our WordPress site.
Here’s how Jenkins integrates into this workflow:
- Code Changes: Whenever we make changes to the WordPress codebase, we push them to a version control system like Git.
- Jenkins Trigger: The push to the Git repository triggers a job in Jenkins.
- Build Stage: Jenkins pulls the latest code, builds a new Docker image containing the updated WordPress application, and pushes it to a Docker registry.
- Deployment Stage: The new Docker image is deployed to our hosting environment, updating the running containers with the latest code.
This automation ensures that our website stays up-to-date with the latest changes without any manual intervention.
Hooked into WordPress Post or Page Publish.
Over and above maintaining the code using Jenkins, each content Publish action triggers another Jenkins project, which runs a sequence of commands. wget in mirror mode to convert the whole site to static HTML files. sed to rewrite the URLs from local host to realtime external domain specific. gzip to create .html.gz for each HTML files. aws cli to sync the static mirror folder with that in AWS S3 and finally apply meta headers to the files to specify the content type and content-encoding. When all the files are synced, the AWS CLI issues an invalidate request to the CloudFront distribution.
Benefits of this Approach
Improved Performance: Docker containers provide a lightweight and efficient environment, leading to faster loading times for this website.
Enhanced Scalability: I don’t need to bother about scaling this application by adding more containers to handle increased traffic, as that is handled by aws S3 and CloudFront.
Simplified Management: Docker and Jenkins automate a significant portion of the infrastructure management, freeing up time for development and content creation. With the docker and all components running in my Asus TUF A17 Laptop powered by XUbuntu the hosting charges are limited to AWS Route53, AWS S3 and AWS CloudFront only.
Reliable Deployments: Jenkins ensures consistent and reliable deployments, minimizing the risk of errors or downtime.
Well for minimal dynamic content like the download counters, AWS Serverless lambda functions are written and deployed for updating download requests into aDynamoDB table and to display the count near any downloadable content with proper markup. Along with this the comments are moved into Disqus, as it is a comment system that can be used on WordPress sites. It can replace the native WordPress comments system.
Conclusion
By leveraging Docker containers and Jenkins, I have established a robust and performant foundation for this site. This approach allows me to focus on delivering high-quality content to the readers while ensuring a smooth and fast user experience.
Additional Considerations
Security: While Docker containers enhance security, it’s essential to maintain secure practices like keeping Docker containers updated and following security best practices for each service.
Monitoring: Monitoring the health and performance of your containers is crucial. Tools like Docker Stats and Prometheus can provide valuable insights.
Hope this article provides a valuable perspective on how Docker and Jenkins can be used to optimize a WordPress website. If you have any questions, feel free to leave a comment below!