Hosting

Hosting requirements, current setup, environment variables and platform-specific configuration.

Requirements

The build process produces a standard WordPress installation in dist/. It can run on:

Any standard PHP/WordPress host (shared hosting, WP Engine, etc.) — just upload dist/ and point the domain at it
Docker-based platforms (Heroku, Railway, Render, etc.) using the included Dockerfile

Minimum requirements:

PHP with a MySQL-compatible database
External media storage (S3, R2 or equivalent) if the host has ephemeral storage. Media offloading (the yax-offload-media plugin) handles this automatically.
Environment variables for configuration. See Environment variables below.

Supported when available

The codebase supports these services but doesn't require them:

Redis — backs the object cache / performance layer (the yax-performance plugin). Without it, WordPress falls back to per-request caching.
Meilisearch — powers full-text search (the yax-meilisearch plugin). Without it, WordPress uses default MySQL LIKE queries.

Current setup (Heroku)

Property	Production	Staging
App name	`womens-healthcare-associates`	`wha-staging`
Domain	whallc.com	staging.whallc.com, whallc.joeyyax.dev
Database	Amazon RDS (MySQL)	Amazon RDS (MySQL)
Media storage	Amazon S3	Amazon S3
SSL	Heroku ACM (auto-managed)	Heroku ACM
Deploy method	Docker build via `heroku.yml`	Docker build via `heroku.yml`

Heroku builds the Docker image from the Dockerfile on each git push. It's not using a buildpack. The heroku.yml file tells Heroku to build and run the container directly.

Heroku-specific files

File	Purpose
`heroku.yml`	Tells Heroku to build from `Dockerfile` instead of using a buildpack
`Dockerfile`	Multi-stage build that produces the production container
`tools/entrypoint-prod.sh`	Container entrypoint — starts PHP-FPM + Nginx, reads `PORT`

Heroku limitations

Single process per dyno — PHP-FPM and Nginx must run in the same container. The entrypoint script handles this.
Ephemeral filesystem — files written at runtime are lost on restart. Media must go to S3. See Operations > Ephemeral storage.
No Redis/Meilisearch without paid add-ons or external services.
30-second request timeout — long-running operations (imports, bulk updates) may time out.

Environment variables

All WordPress configuration comes from environment variables. Nothing is hardcoded, so the same container image runs in any environment by changing the env vars.

How they work

wp-config.custom.php reads every setting via getenv_docker(), which checks environment variables with fallback defaults. This means:

Local dev: set in .env (loaded by Docker Compose)
Heroku: set via heroku config:set or the dashboard
Docker hosts: set in the compose file or container runtime

Core variables

Variable	Example	Notes
`WORDPRESS_DB_HOST`	`db:3306`	Database host
`WORDPRESS_DB_NAME`	`wordpress`	Database name
`WORDPRESS_DB_USER`	`wordpress`	Database user
`WORDPRESS_DB_PASSWORD`	`(secret)`	Database password
`WORDPRESS_TABLE_PREFIX`	`wp_`	Table prefix
`WORDPRESS_DEBUG`	`false`	Never enable on production

Services

Variable	Example	Notes
`REDIS_HOST`	`redis`	Redis hostname (when available)
`REDIS_PORT`	`6379`	Redis port
`S3_UPLOADS_BUCKET`	`wha-media`	S3/R2 bucket name
`S3_UPLOADS_REGION`	`us-west-2`	AWS region (or `auto` for R2)
`S3_UPLOADS_KEY`	`(secret)`	Storage access key
`S3_UPLOADS_SECRET`	`(secret)`	Storage secret key
`S3_UPLOADS_ENDPOINT`	`https://...`	Custom endpoint (required for R2, optional for S3)
`MAPBOX_ACCESS_TOKEN`	`pk.ey...`	Mapbox GL JS for maps

PHP tuning

Variable	Example	Notes
`PHP_MEMORY_LIMIT`	`256M`	PHP memory limit
`PHP_MAX_EXECUTION_TIME`	`600`	Max execution time (seconds)
`PHP_UPLOAD_MAX_FILESIZE`	`64M`	Max upload file size
`PHP_POST_MAX_SIZE`	`64M`	Max POST body size

Operations

Variable	Example	Notes
`WORDPRESS_BLOCK_PLUGINS`	`debug-bar query-monitor`	Plugins to physically remove on container start
`WORDPRESS_DEBUG_LOG`	`false`	Write debug output to file (ephemeral on Heroku)

Deploying to other platforms

The dist/ output is a standard WordPress installation. It can be deployed to:

Standard PHP hosts

Upload dist/ to any PHP host (shared hosting, WP Engine, managed WordPress, etc.). Set up the database, configure wp-config.php environment variables and point the domain. No Docker required.

The included Dockerfile builds a production container. Point any Docker host (Railway, Render, Coolify, etc.) at the Git repo, set the environment variables and map a domain. The container handles everything: Nginx listens on PORT, PHP-FPM starts automatically.

What changes between platforms

The codebase doesn't change, only environment variables and infrastructure. Database, media storage and optional services (Redis, Meilisearch) are configured entirely through env vars.