WordPress + MySQL in one cardinal up

Most sites are more than one container. cardinal's compose support starts a

whole stack from a single cardinal.toml, respecting dependencies — the

database comes up first, WordPress waits for it.

1. Write cardinal.toml

[container.db]
image = "mysql:8"
ports = ["3306:3306"]
env = {
  MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD = "root_pass123",
  MYSQL_DATABASE = "wordpress",
  MYSQL_USER = "wordpress",
  MYSQL_PASSWORD = "wp_pass123",
}
volumes = ["db_data:/var/lib/mysql"]
restart = "always"

[container.wordpress]
image = "wordpress:latest"
ports = ["8080:80"]
env = {
  WORDPRESS_DB_HOST = "db:3306",
  WORDPRESS_DB_USER = "wordpress",
  WORDPRESS_DB_PASSWORD = "wp_pass123",
  WORDPRESS_DB_NAME = "wordpress",
}
volumes = ["wp_data:/var/www/html"]
restart = "always"
depends_on = { db = "service_healthy" }

Two details worth noting:

• WORDPRESS_DB_HOST = "db:3306" — containers reach each other by name on

the cardinal0 bridge, so WordPress talks to the db container directly.

• depends_on = { db = "service_healthy" } — cardinal waits for MySQL's

healthcheck before starting WordPress, so there's no race on first boot.

2. Start the stack

cardinal up

cardinal auto-detects cardinal.toml, creates both containers in dependency

order, and pulls the images if needed. Verify:

cardinal ps

3. Install WordPress

Open http://your-server-ip:8080 and run through the installer. Content and

plugins persist in the wp_data volume.

4. Day-to-day

cardinal up myapp               # start only one service
cardinal down                   # stop + remove the stack (volumes stay)
cardinal volume ls              # db_data / wp_data are still there
cardinal logs -f wordpress      # follow logs

Want to expose it on 443 with TLS later? Point a Caddy container at

wordpress:80 and let it terminate HTTPS for you.