WordPress DevOps

A walkthrough of a Docker Compose setup for WordPress that actually behaves: MariaDB with a real healthcheck, Redis for the object cache, Xdebug for step debugging, Mailpit for captured email, and WP-CLI as a profiled service. Covers the traps nobody warns you about, including the Alpine vs Debian UID mismatch and why localhost is never the Redis host.

WordPress automatic updates are not a single switch. Core, plugins, themes, and translations each run through their own filter, their own site option, and their own UI surface. This article maps the full mechanism, then walks the three configurations that cover almost every developer and agency need: locking the site down, keeping only security and translation updates, or controlling auto-updates per plugin from a single mu-plugin.

WP-Cron riding on visitor traffic is fine until it isn't: scheduled jobs slip, PHP workers tie up on the loopback POST, and on quiet sites events stack up for days. This article walks the production-grade replacement: disable the in-WordPress trigger with DISABLE_WP_CRON, then run the WordPress cron from a real cron daemon (cPanel, crontab + WP-CLI, crontab + curl, or a Kubernetes CronJob) and verify it is actually firing.