charts/bitnami/wordpress

WordPress

WordPress is one of the most versatile open source content management systems on the market. A publishing platform for building blogs and websites.

TL;DR

$ helm repo add bitnami https://charts.bitnami.com/bitnami
$ helm install my-release bitnami/wordpress

Introduction

This chart bootstraps a WordPress deployment on a Kubernetes cluster using the Helm package manager.

It also packages the Bitnami MariaDB chart which is required for bootstrapping a MariaDB deployment for the database requirements of the WordPress application.

Bitnami charts can be used with Kubeapps for deployment and management of Helm Charts in clusters. This chart has been tested to work with NGINX Ingress, cert-manager, fluentd and Prometheus on top of the BKPR.

Prerequisites

• Kubernetes 1.12+
• Helm 2.12+ or Helm 3.0-beta3+
• PV provisioner support in the underlying infrastructure
• ReadWriteMany volumes for deployment scaling

Installing the Chart

To install the chart with the release name my-release:

helm install my-release bitnami/wordpress

The command deploys WordPress on the Kubernetes cluster in the default configuration. The Parameters section lists the parameters that can be configured during installation.

Tip

: List all releases using helm list

Uninstalling the Chart

To uninstall/delete the my-release deployment:

helm delete my-release

The command removes all the Kubernetes components associated with the chart and deletes the release.

Parameters

The following table lists the configurable parameters of the WordPress chart and their default values per section/component:

Global parameters

Parameter	Description	Default
global.imageRegistry	Global Docker image registry	nil
global.imagePullSecrets	Global Docker registry secret names as an array	[] (does not add image pull secrets to deployed pods)
global.storageClass	Global storage class for dynamic provisioning	nil

Common parameters

Parameter	Description	Default
nameOverride	String to partially override wordpress.fullname	nil
fullnameOverride	String to fully override wordpress.fullname	nil
clusterDomain	Default Kubernetes cluster domain	cluster.local
commonLabels	Labels to add to all deployed objects	{}
commonAnnotations	Annotations to add to all deployed objects	{}

WordPress parameters

Parameter	Description	Default
image.registry	WordPress image registry	docker.io
image.repository	WordPress image name	bitnami/wordpress
image.tag	WordPress image tag	{TAG_NAME}
image.pullPolicy	WordPress image pull policy	IfNotPresent
image.pullSecrets	Specify docker-registry secret names as an array	[] (does not add image pull secrets to deployed pods)
image.debug	Specify if debug logs should be enabled	false
wordpressSkipInstall	Skip wizard installation when the external db already contains data from a previous WordPress installation see	false
wordpressUsername	User of the application	user
existingSecret	Name of the existing Wordpress Secret (it must contain a key named wordpress-password). When it's set, wordpressPassword is ignored	nil
wordpressPassword	Application password	random 10 character long alphanumeric string
wordpressEmail	Admin email	user@example.com
wordpressFirstName	First name	FirstName
wordpressLastName	Last name	LastName
wordpressBlogName	Blog name	User's Blog!
wordpressTablePrefix	Table prefix	wp_
wordpressScheme	Scheme to generate application URLs [http, https]	http
wordpressExtraConfigContent	Add extra content to the configuration file	""
allowEmptyPassword	Allow DB blank passwords	true
allowOverrideNone	Set Apache AllowOverride directive to None	false
htaccessPersistenceEnabled	Make .htaccess persistence so that it can be customized. See	false
customHTAccessCM	Configmap with custom wordpress-htaccess.conf directives	nil
smtpHost	SMTP host	nil
smtpPort	SMTP port	nil
smtpUser	SMTP user	nil
smtpPassword	SMTP password	nil
smtpUsername	User name for SMTP emails	nil
smtpProtocol	SMTP protocol [tls, ssl, none]	nil
smtpExistingPassword	Existing secret containing SMTP password in key smtp-password	nil
command	Override default container command (useful when using custom images)	nil
args	Override default container args (useful when using custom images)	nil
extraEnv	Additional container environment variables	[]
extraVolumeMounts	Additional volume mounts	[]
extraVolumes	Additional volumes	[]
sidecars	Attach additional sidecar containers to the pod	nil
replicaCount	Number of WordPress Pods to run	1
updateStrategy	Set up update strategy	RollingUpdate
schedulerName	Name of the alternate scheduler	nil
securityContext.enabled	Enable security context for WordPress pods	true
securityContext.fsGroup	Group ID for the WordPress filesystem	1001
securityContext.runAsUser	User ID for the WordPress container	1001
resources.limits	The resources limits for the WordPress container	{}
resources.requests	The requested resources for the WordPress container	{"memory": "512Mi", "cpu": "300m"}
nodeSelector	Node labels for pod assignment	{} (evaluated as a template)
tolerations	Tolerations for pod assignment	[] (evaluated as a template)
affinity	Affinity for pod assignment	{} (evaluated as a template)
podLabels	Pod labels	{} (evaluated as a template)
podAnnotations	Pod annotations	{} (evaluated as a template)
healthcheckHttps	Use https for liveliness and readiness	false
livenessProbe.enabled	Enable/disable livenessProbe	true
livenessProbe.initialDelaySeconds	Delay before liveness probe is initiated	120
livenessProbe.periodSeconds	How often to perform the probe	10
livenessProbe.timeoutSeconds	When the probe times out	5
livenessProbe.failureThreshold	Minimum consecutive failures for the probe	6
livenessProbe.successThreshold	Minimum consecutive successes for the probe	1
livenessProbeHeaders	Headers to use for livenessProbe	{}
customLivenessProbe	Override default liveness probe (evaluated as a template)	{}
readinessProbe.enabled	Enable/disable readinessProbe	true
readinessProbe.initialDelaySeconds	Delay before readiness probe is initiated	30
readinessProbe.periodSeconds	How often to perform the probe	10
readinessProbe.timeoutSeconds	When the probe times out	5
readinessProbe.failureThreshold	Minimum consecutive failures for the probe	6
readinessProbe.successThreshold	Minimum consecutive successes for the probe	1
readinessProbeHeaders	Headers to use for readinessProbe	{}
customReadinessProbe	Override default readiness probe (evaluated as a template)	{}
service.annotations	Service annotations	{} (evaluated as a template)
service.type	Kubernetes Service type	LoadBalancer
service.port	Service HTTP port	80
service.httpsPort	Service HTTPS port	443
service.httpsTargetPort	Service Target HTTPS port	https
service.loadBalancerSourceRanges	Restricts access for LoadBalancer (only with service.type: LoadBalancer)	[]
service.metricsPort	Service Metrics port	9117
service.externalTrafficPolicy	Enable client source IP preservation	Cluster
service.nodePorts.http	Kubernetes http node port	""
service.nodePorts.https	Kubernetes https node port	""
service.nodePorts.metrics	Kubernetes metrics node port	""
service.extraPorts	Extra ports to expose in the service (normally used with the sidecar value)	nil
persistence.enabled	Enable persistence using PVC	true
persistence.existingClaim	Enable persistence using an existing PVC	nil
persistence.storageClass	PVC Storage Class	nil (uses alpha storage class annotation)
persistence.accessMode	PVC Access Mode	ReadWriteOnce
persistence.size	PVC Storage Request	10Gi

Ingress parameters

Parameter	Description	Default
ingress.enabled	Enable ingress controller resource	false
ingress.certManager	Add annotations for cert-manager	false
ingress.hostname	Default host for the ingress resource	wordpress.local
ingress.path	Default path for the ingress resource	/
ingress.tls	Create TLS Secret	false
ingress.annotations	Ingress annotations	[] (evaluated as a template)
ingress.extraHosts[0].name	Additional hostnames to be covered	nil
ingress.extraHosts[0].path	Additional hostnames to be covered	nil
ingress.extraTls[0].hosts[0]	TLS configuration for additional hostnames to be covered	nil
ingress.extraTls[0].secretName	TLS configuration for additional hostnames to be covered	nil
ingress.secrets[0].name	TLS Secret Name	nil
ingress.secrets[0].certificate	TLS Secret Certificate	nil
ingress.secrets[0].key	TLS Secret Key	nil

Database parameters

Parameter	Description	Default
mariadb.enabled	Deploy MariaDB container(s)	true
mariadb.rootUser.password	MariaDB admin password	nil
mariadb.db.name	Database name to create	bitnami_wordpress
mariadb.db.user	Database user to create	bn_wordpress
mariadb.db.password	Password for the database	random 10 character long alphanumeric string
mariadb.replication.enabled	MariaDB replication enabled	false
mariadb.master.persistence.enabled	Enable database persistence using PVC	true
mariadb.master.persistence.accessModes	Database Persistent Volume Access Modes	[ReadWriteOnce]
mariadb.master.persistence.size	Database Persistent Volume Size	8Gi
externalDatabase.host	Host of the external database	localhost
externalDatabase.user	Existing username in the external db	bn_wordpress
externalDatabase.existingSecret	Name of the database existing Secret Object	nil
externalDatabase.password	Password for the above username	nil
externalDatabase.database	Name of the existing database	bitnami_wordpress
externalDatabase.port	Database port number	3306

Metrics parameters

Parameter	Description	Default
metrics.enabled	Start a side-car prometheus exporter	false
metrics.image.registry	Apache exporter image registry	docker.io
metrics.image.repository	Apache exporter image name	bitnami/apache-exporter
metrics.image.tag	Apache exporter image tag	{TAG_NAME}
metrics.image.pullPolicy	Image pull policy	IfNotPresent
metrics.image.pullSecrets	Specify docker-registry secret names as an array	[] (does not add image pull secrets to deployed pods)
metrics.podAnnotations	Additional annotations for Metrics exporter pod	{prometheus.io/scrape: "true", prometheus.io/port: "9117"}
metrics.resources.limits	The resources limits for the metrics exporter container	{}
metrics.resources.requests	The requested resources for the metrics exporter container	{}
metrics.serviceMonitor.enabled	Create ServiceMonitor Resource for scraping metrics using PrometheusOperator	false
metrics.serviceMonitor.namespace	Namespace where servicemonitor resource should be created	nil
metrics.serviceMonitor.interval	Specify the interval at which metrics should be scraped	30s
metrics.serviceMonitor.scrapeTimeout	Specify the timeout after which the scrape is ended	nil
metrics.serviceMonitor.relabellings	Specify Metric Relabellings to add to the scrape endpoint	nil
metrics.serviceMonitor.honorLabels	honorLabels chooses the metric's labels on collisions with target labels.	false
metrics.serviceMonitor.additionalLabels	Used to pass Labels that are required by the Installed Prometheus Operator	{}

The above parameters map to the env variables defined in bitnami/wordpress. For more information please refer to the bitnami/wordpress image documentation.

Specify each parameter using the --set key=value[,key=value] argument to helm install. For example,

helm install my-release \
  --set wordpressUsername=admin \
  --set wordpressPassword=password \
  --set mariadb.mariadbRootPassword=secretpassword \
    bitnami/wordpress

The above command sets the WordPress administrator account username and password to admin and password respectively. Additionally, it sets the MariaDB root user password to secretpassword.

Alternatively, a YAML file that specifies the values for the above parameters can be provided while installing the chart. For example,

helm install my-release -f values.yaml bitnami/wordpress

Tip

: You can use the default values.yaml

Configuration and installation details

Rolling VS Immutable tags

It is strongly recommended to use immutable tags in a production environment. This ensures your deployment does not change automatically if the same tag is updated with a different image.

Bitnami will release a new chart updating its containers if a new version of the main container, significant changes, or critical vulnerabilities exist.

Production configuration

This chart includes a values-production.yaml file where you can find some parameters oriented to production configuration in comparison to the regular values.yaml. You can use this file instead of the default one.

• Set Apache AllowOverride directive to None:

- allowOverrideNone: false
+ allowOverrideNone: true

• Number of WordPress Pods to run:

- replicaCount: 1
+ replicaCount: 3

• Enable client source IP preservation:

- service.externalTrafficPolicy: Cluster
+ service.externalTrafficPolicy: Local

• PVC Access Mode:

- persistence.accessMode: ReadWriteOnce
+ ## To use the /admin portal and to ensure you can scale wordpress you need to provide a
+ ## ReadWriteMany PVC, if you dont have a provisioner for this type of storage
+ ## We recommend that you install the nfs provisioner and map it to a RWO volume
+ ## helm install nfs-server stable/nfs-server-provisioner --set persistence.enabled=true,persistence.size=10Gi
+ ##
+ persistence.accessMode: ReadWriteMany

• Start a side-car prometheus exporter:

- metrics.enabled: false
+ metrics.enabled: true

Note that values-production.yaml includes a replicaCount of 3, so there will be 3 WordPress pods. As a result, to use the "/admin" portal and to ensure you can scale wordpress you need to provide a ReadWriteMany PVC, if you don't have a provisioner for this type of storage, we recommend that you install the NFS Server Provisioner chart (with the correct parameters, such as persistence.enabled=true and persistence.size=10Gi) and map it to a RWO volume.

Then, you can deploy WordPress chart using the proper parameters:

persistence.storageClass=nfs
mariadb.master.persistence.storageClass=nfs

Known limitations

When performing admin operations that require activating the maintenance mode (such as updating a plugin or theme), it's activated in only one replica (see: bug report). This implies that WP could be attending requests on other replicas while performing admin operations, with unpredictable consequences.

To avoid that, you can manually activate/deactivate the maintenance mode on every replica using the WP CLI. For instance, if you installed WP with three replicas, you can run the commands below to activate the maintenance mode in all of them (assuming that the release name is wordpress):

kubectl exec $(kubectl get pods -l app.kubernetes.io/name=wordpress -o jsonpath='{.items[0].metadata.name}') -c wordpress -- wp maintenance-mode activate
kubectl exec $(kubectl get pods -l app.kubernetes.io/name=wordpress -o jsonpath='{.items[1].metadata.name}') -c wordpress -- wp maintenance-mode activate
kubectl exec $(kubectl get pods -l app.kubernetes.io/name=wordpress -o jsonpath='{.items[2].metadata.name}') -c wordpress -- wp maintenance-mode activate

Sidecars

If you have a need for additional containers to run within the same pod as WordPress (e.g. an additional metrics or logging exporter), you can do so via the sidecars config parameter. Simply define your container according to the Kubernetes container spec.

sidecars:
- name: your-image-name
  image: your-image
  imagePullPolicy: Always
  ports:
  - name: portname
   containerPort: 1234

If these sidecars export extra ports, you can add extra port definitions using the service.extraPorts value:

service:
...
  extraPorts:
  - name: extraPort
    port: 11311
    targetPort: 11311

Using an external database

Sometimes you may want to have Wordpress connect to an external database rather than installing one inside your cluster, e.g. to use a managed database service, or use run a single database server for all your applications. To do this, the chart allows you to specify credentials for an external database under the externalDatabase parameter. You should also disable the MariaDB installation with the mariadb.enabled option. For example with the following parameters:

mariadb.enabled=false
externalDatabase.host=myexternalhost
externalDatabase.user=myuser
externalDatabase.password=mypassword
externalDatabase.database=mydatabase
externalDatabase.port=3306

Note also if you disable MariaDB per above you MUST supply values for the externalDatabase connection.

In case the database already contains data from a previous WordPress installation, you need to set the wordpressSkipInstall parameter to true. Otherwise, the container would execute the installation wizard and could modify the existing data in the database. This parameter force the container to not execute the WordPress installation wizard. This is necessary in case you use a database that already has WordPress data +info.

Ingress

This chart provides support for ingress resources. If you have an ingress controller installed on your cluster, such as nginx-ingress or traefik you can utilize the ingress controller to serve your WordPress application.

To enable ingress integration, please set ingress.enabled to true

Hosts

Most likely you will only want to have one hostname that maps to this WordPress installation. If that's your case, the property ingress.hostname will set it. However, it is possible to have more than one host. To facilitate this, the ingress.extraHosts object is can be specified as an array. You can also use ingress.extraTLS to add the TLS configuration for extra hosts.

For each host indicated at ingress.extraHosts, please indicate a name, path, and any annotations that you may want the ingress controller to know about.

Indicating TLS will cause WordPress to generate HTTPS URLs, and WordPress will be connected to at port 443. The actual TLS secret do not have to be generated by this chart. However, please note that if TLS is enabled, the ingress record will not work until this secret exists.

For annotations, please see this document. Not all annotations are supported by all ingress controllers, but this document does a good job of indicating which annotation is supported by many popular ingress controllers.

TLS Secrets

This chart will facilitate the creation of TLS secrets for use with the ingress controller, however, this is not required. There are three common use cases:

• Helm generates/manages certificate secrets
• User generates/manages certificates separately
• An additional tool (like kube-lego) manages the secrets for the application

In the first two cases, one will need a certificate and a key. We would expect them to look like this:

• certificate files should look like (and there can be more than one certificate if there is a certificate chain)

-----BEGIN CERTIFICATE-----
MIID6TCCAtGgAwIBAgIJAIaCwivkeB5EMA0GCSqGSIb3DQEBCwUAMFYxCzAJBgNV
...
jScrvkiBO65F46KioCL9h5tDvomdU1aqpI/CBzhvZn1c0ZTf87tGQR8NK7v7
-----END CERTIFICATE-----

• keys should look like:

-----BEGIN RSA PRIVATE KEY-----
MIIEogIBAAKCAQEAvLYcyu8f3skuRyUgeeNpeDvYBCDcgq+LsWap6zbX5f8oLqp4
...
wrj2wDbCDCFmfqnSJ+dKI3vFLlEz44sAV8jX/kd4Y6ZTQhlLbYc=
-----END RSA PRIVATE KEY-----

If you are going to use Helm to manage the certificates, please copy these values into the certificate and key values for a given ingress.secrets entry.

If you are going to manage TLS secrets outside of Helm, please know that you can create a TLS secret (named wordpress.local-tls for example).

Please see this example for more information.

Ingress-terminated https

In cases where HTTPS/TLS is terminated on the ingress, you may run into an issue where non-https liveness and readiness probes result in a 302 (redirect from HTTP to HTTPS) and are interpreted by Kubernetes as not-live/not-ready. (See Kubernetes issue #47893 on GitHub for further details about 302 not being interpreted as "successful".) To work around this problem, use livenessProbeHeaders and readinessProbeHeaders to pass the same headers that your ingress would pass in order to get an HTTP 200 status result. For example (where the following is in a --values-referenced file):

livenessProbeHeaders:
  - name: X-Forwarded-Proto
    value: https
readinessProbeHeaders:
  - name: X-Forwarded-Proto
    value: https

Any number of name/value pairs may be specified; they are all copied into the liveness or readiness probe definition.

Disabling .htaccess

For performance and security reasons, it is a good practice to configure Apache with AllowOverride None. Instead of using .htaccess files, Apache will load the same dircetives at boot time. These directives are located in /opt/bitnami/wordpress/wordpress-htaccess.conf. The container image includes by default these directives all of the default .htaccess files in WordPress (together with the default plugins). To enable this feature, install the chart with the following value: allowOverrideNone=yes

However, some plugins may include .htaccess directives that will not be loaded when AllowOverride is set to None. A way to make them work would be to create your own wordpress-htaccess.conf file with all the required dircectives to make the plugin work. After creating it, then create a ConfigMap with it and install the chart with the correct parameters:

allowOverrideNone=true
customHTAccessCM=custom-htaccess

Also, some plugins permit editing the .htaccess and it might be needed to persit it in order to keep the changes, A way to make it work would be to set htaccessPersistenceEnabled.

allowOverrideNone=false
htaccessPersistenceEnabled=true

Persistence

The Bitnami WordPress image stores the WordPress data and configurations at the /bitnami path of the container.

Persistent Volume Claims are used to keep the data across deployments. This is known to work in GCE, AWS, and minikube. See the Parameters section to configure the PVC or to disable persistence.

Upgrading

To 9.0.0

The Bitnami WordPress image was migrated to a "non-root" user approach. Previously the container ran as the root user and the Apache daemon was started as the daemon user. From now on, both the container and the Apache daemon run as user 1001. You can revert this behavior by setting the parameters securityContext.runAsUser, and securityContext.fsGroup to 0. Chart labels and Ingress configuration were also adapted to follow the Helm charts best practices.

Consequences:

• The HTTP/HTTPS ports exposed by the container are now 8080/8443 instead of 80/443.
• No writing permissions will be granted on wp-config.php by default.
• Backwards compatibility is not guaranteed.

To upgrade to 9.0.0, install a new WordPress chart, and migrate your WordPress site using backup/restore tools such as VaultPress or All-in-One WP Migration.

To 8.0.0

Helm performs a lookup for the object based on its group (apps), version (v1), and kind (Deployment). Also known as its GroupVersionKind, or GVK. Changing the GVK is considered a compatibility breaker from Kubernetes' point of view, so you cannot "upgrade" those objects to the new GVK in-place. Earlier versions of Helm 3 did not perform the lookup correctly which has since been fixed to match the spec.

In https://github.com/helm/charts/pulls/12642 the apiVersion of the deployment resources was updated to apps/v1 in tune with the api's deprecated, resulting in compatibility breakage.

This major version signifies this change.

To 3.0.0

Backwards compatibility is not guaranteed unless you modify the labels used on the chart's deployments. Use the workaround below to upgrade from versions previous to 3.0.0. The following example assumes that the release name is wordpress:

kubectl patch deployment wordpress-wordpress --type=json -p='[{"op": "remove", "path": "/spec/selector/matchLabels/chart"}]'
kubectl delete statefulset wordpress-mariadb --cascade=false