Customizing PHP Settings in a WordPress Docker Environment

Some WordPress plugins or themes require a custom PHP environment to function smoothly. If you are using docker-compose as your primary orchestration tool, you’ll need a custom Dockerfile and to mount a custom.ini file into the image.

Follow these steps.

docker-compose.yml

services:
  wordpress:
    build: .
    restart: always
    ports:
      - 80:80
    environment:
      WORDPRESS_DB_HOST: db
      WORDPRESS_DB_USER: wp
      WORDPRESS_DB_PASSWORD: secret
      WORDPRESS_DB_NAME: wp
    volumes:
      - .:/var/www/html
 
  db:
    # Adjust the version from https://hub.docker.com/_/mariadb
    image: mariadb:11.6
    restart: always
    environment:
      MARIADB_DATABASE: wp
      MARIADB_USER: wp
      MARIADB_PASSWORD: secret
      MARIADB_RANDOM_ROOT_PASSWORD: '1'
    volumes:
      - db:/var/lib/mysql
 
volumes:
  db:

Dockerfile

# Adjust the version from https://hub.docker.com/_/wordpress
FROM wordpress:6.7.1-php8.3-apache
 
COPY custom.ini $PHP_INI_DIR/conf.d/

custom.ini

max_execution_time = 180
max_input_vars = 5000

Finally, start all the services by running:

docker compose up -d

Your PHP environment will now load the custom PHP settings.

Feel free to checkout the code at Github.