How To Add phpMyAdmin and FTP to the Coolify Docker Compose

If you prefer VPS over shared hosting, you can enjoy greater control, scalability, and security for your WordPress website.

With a VPS, you have dedicated resources and the flexibility to customize your server environment to meet your specific needs.

It can be daunting to manage WordPress in a VPS environment, though.

I recently tried Coolify and liked it.

Coolify is PaaS for self-hosting your application. It is an alternative to Heroku or even Vercel and Netlify.

I tried to self-host a WordPress website.

There are a bunch of resources ready to install, including WordPress with MySQL as the database.

To me, phpMyAdmin and FTP are still necessary applications for this stack to operate properly.

Here is how I add FTP and phpMyadmin to the existing Coolify stack.

Adding phpMyAdmin to the default Coolify WordPress Stack

Following the successful installation of Coolify's WordPress and MySQL stack,

Open the Compose File. Take a look at the last service from this compose file.

services:
  wordpress:
    image: 'wordpress:latest'
    volumes:
      - 'wordpress-files:/var/www/html'
    environment:
      - SERVICE_FQDN_WORDPRESS
      - WORDPRESS_DB_HOST=mysql
      - WORDPRESS_DB_USER=$SERVICE_USER_WORDPRESS
      - WORDPRESS_DB_PASSWORD=$SERVICE_PASSWORD_WORDPRESS
      - WORDPRESS_DB_NAME=wordpress
    depends_on:
      - mysql
    healthcheck:
      test:
        - CMD
        - curl
        - '-f'
        - 'http://127.0.0.1'
      interval: 2s
      timeout: 10s
      retries: 10
  mysql:
    image: 'mysql:5.7'
    volumes:
      - 'mysql-data:/var/lib/mysql'
    environment:
      - MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD=$SERVICE_PASSWORD_ROOT
      - MYSQL_DATABASE=wordpress
      - MYSQL_USER=$SERVICE_USER_WORDPRESS
      - MYSQL_PASSWORD=$SERVICE_PASSWORD_WORDPRESS
    healthcheck:
      test:
        - CMD
        - mysqladmin
        - ping
        - '-h'
        - 127.0.0.1
      interval: 5s
      timeout: 20s
      retries: 10
  pma:
    depends_on:
      - mysql
    image: phpmyadmin/phpmyadmin
    ports:
      - '8070:80'
    environment:
      - PMA_HOST=mysql
      - PMA_PASSWORD=$SERVICE_PASSWORD_ROOT

• From that code, you can see that we add pma container.
• Make sure depends_on value has the same name of the database service name. In my case mysql.
• Make sure you also have the same service name for PMA_HOST with the database name, in my case mysql.
• Make sure the port does not conflict with the other port you currently have.
• Save and click "Pull Latest Images & Restart".
• Open the link that has the associated port, ex: http://<vps IP>:<port number>.
• Fill in the username with root and copy the SERVICE_PASSWORD_ROOT value as the password.
• You should successfully log in to the phpMyAdmin panel.

Adding FTP to the default Coolify WordPress Stack

Now let's add the FTP to the service stack.

Take a look at the last service from this Docker compose file.

services:
  wordpress:
    image: 'wordpress:latest'
    volumes:
      - 'wordpress-files:/var/www/html'
    environment:
      - SERVICE_FQDN_WORDPRESS
      - WORDPRESS_DB_HOST=mysql
      - WORDPRESS_DB_USER=$SERVICE_USER_WORDPRESS
      - WORDPRESS_DB_PASSWORD=$SERVICE_PASSWORD_WORDPRESS
      - WORDPRESS_DB_NAME=wordpress
    depends_on:
      - mysql
    healthcheck:
      test:
        - CMD
        - curl
        - '-f'
        - 'http://127.0.0.1'
      interval: 2s
      timeout: 10s
      retries: 10
  mysql:
    image: 'mysql:5.7'
    volumes:
      - 'mysql-data:/var/lib/mysql'
    environment:
      - MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD=$SERVICE_PASSWORD_ROOT
      - MYSQL_DATABASE=wordpress
      - MYSQL_USER=$SERVICE_USER_WORDPRESS
      - MYSQL_PASSWORD=$SERVICE_PASSWORD_WORDPRESS
    healthcheck:
      test:
        - CMD
        - mysqladmin
        - ping
        - '-h'
        - 127.0.0.1
      interval: 5s
      timeout: 20s
      retries: 10
  pma:
    depends_on:
      - mysql
    image: phpmyadmin/phpmyadmin
    ports:
      - '8070:80'
    environment:
      - PMA_HOST=mysql
      - PMA_PASSWORD=$SERVICE_PASSWORD_ROOT
  ftp:
    image: delfer/alpine-ftp-server
    network_mode: host
    ports:
      - '21:21'
      - '21000-21010:21000-21010'
    environment:
      - USERS=rootadmin|yourrootpass|/var/www/html|10002
    volumes:
      - 'wordpress-files:/var/www/html'

• Notice we add ftp service to the stack.
• Make sure you have the environment that have USERS with value username|password|folder|uid. In my case, rootadmin is my FTP username, yourrootpass is my FTP password, /var/www/htmlis my FTP folder, and 1002 is my FTP uid.
• Save and click "Pull Latest Images & Restart"
• Now you can try using an FTP application like Filezilla to access the Wordpress file folder.

That's it, now you have phpMyAdmin and FTP on the default Coolify WordPress stack.

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