How to Deploy MediaWiki Using Docker Compose for Rapid Setup and Management

Want to evaluate MediaWiki — or build a small internal wiki — without installing PHP, extensions and a database by hand? Docker Compose gets a wiki running in about ten minutes. This quickstart uses the official images (mediawiki, mariadb), which is fine for evaluation and small deployments; a production-oriented version (backups, upgrades, volume strategy) is covered in the companion article on this blog — that one is the reference once the wiki stops being an experiment.

1. The compose file

services:
  mediawiki:
    image: mediawiki:lts
    restart: unless-stopped
    ports:
      - "8080:80"
    environment:
      MEDIAWIKI_DB_HOST: db
      MEDIAWIKI_DB_NAME: mediawiki
      MEDIAWIKI_DB_USER: mediawiki
      MEDIAWIKI_DB_PASSWORD: "${MW_DB_PASSWORD}"
    volumes:
      - mw-images:/var/www/html/images
      - ./LocalSettings.php:/var/www/html/LocalSettings.php:ro
    depends_on:
      - db

  db:
    image: mariadb:11
    restart: unless-stopped
    environment:
      MARIADB_ROOT_PASSWORD: "${MW_DB_ROOT_PASSWORD}"
      MARIADB_DATABASE: mediawiki
      MARIADB_USER: mediawiki
      MARIADB_PASSWORD: "${MW_DB_PASSWORD}"
    volumes:
      - db-data:/var/lib/mysql

volumes:
  mw-images:
  db-data:

Create a .env next to it with the two passwords, then start the stack:

echo 'MW_DB_PASSWORD=change-me' > .env
echo 'MW_DB_ROOT_PASSWORD=change-me-too' >> .env
docker compose up -d

2. Run the installer

Open http://localhost:8080. The MediaWiki installer asks for database details — use host db, database mediawiki, user mediawiki and the password from .env. Complete the site name and admin account; the installer then offers to download LocalSettings.php. Save it in the project directory and restart:

docker compose up -d   # recreates the container with LocalSettings.php mounted

That is a working wiki. Special:Version shows the MediaWiki version and which extensions are bundled.

3. Quick checks and tweaks

• Rebuild after config changes — LocalSettings.php is mounted read-only, so edits apply on docker compose restart mediawiki; to add an extension during evaluation, mount it like ./extensions/Foo:/var/www/html/extensions/Foo:ro and wfLoadExtension-load it
• Logs — docker compose logs -f mediawiki shows PHP and Apache output for debugging
• Test database — wipe everything with docker compose down -v (volumes included) and you are back to a clean slate — the main advantage of evaluation in containers

4. Before it becomes production

The quickstart is deliberately thin. When this wiki starts holding real content, in order of importance:

1. HTTPS — put a reverse proxy (Caddy, Traefik, nginx) in front and terminate TLS; the wiki itself stays on the internal network
2. Backups — automate mariadb-dump of the db container and archive the mw-images volume
3. Upgrades — pin the image version (mediawiki:1.43 instead of :lts), and plan the maintenance/run.php update step for every bump
4. Secrets — move .env out of Git, or use your secret manager (Docker Swarm/Compose secrets, a vault)

Ten minutes to a wiki, one more hour to a production posture. The official mediawiki image documentation and the production-focused companion guide cover the rest.