Out with the old, in with the new. My old website, that used a Python CMS and ran on Apache on an older version of Debian, is out, and has been replaced with WordPress and Docker containers running on a newer version of Debian 10.
Boy, that was a process; deploying Docker containers in production without proper verification can be challenging.
Just because something works great locally doesn’t mean it will on a production server, and I learned this the hard way.
How I Did It
I had to reinstall my OS: Debian 10. I quickly became apparent software for Debian is older than what is available for Arch Linux, where I tested my Docker containers.
I did quite a bit of set up on my local machine, before copying it to my server and using docker-compose to launch my containers.
After that, there was tweaking to various different configuration files for my web server, nginx, and for WordPress. Setting a hostname for my main container inside my docker-compose.yml file seemed to help things.
Other than that, the work I’ve performed has been minor fixes to the look and links.
What Happened
Issues I Encountered
Older Software
Despite having a recent LTS Linux distribution, it doesn’t mean that the packages will be up to date, as much as I am used to on Arch Linux. I had to grab the latest docker-compose, and add Docker’s apt repository.
Not being able to fix a problem in Apache’s config files
I had trouble getting the server to forward requests to my Docker container. My frustrations eventually led me to use nginx instead, partly due to syntax. I also had the same issue with nginx, but in hindsight, I think the container was causing the problem, not the web server.
Browsers Insisting on Redirection
This was a problem on Firefox on X11, and Chrome on my Android tablet. They both have a persistent cache that if the initial server response says to redirect, the browser will remember this. I’ve had to clear by browser cache a few times during testing to verify that my web server is working correctly.
What Next
Sadly, I didn’t backup my git repositories stored on my server. I may publish some code to remedy this loss. I might do some tutorials, and publish pictures.
What would you like to see? Let me know in the comments below.
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