How to run WordPress locally on Fedora

LocalPress is a free desktop app that creates and manages local WordPress sites for you. Each site gets its own PHP, nginx and MariaDB, and opens at an address like my-site.localhost.

1. 1

   Download

   Get the LocalPress RPM.
2. 2

   Install

   sudo dnf install ./LocalPress-aarch64.rpm

   Or double-click the file to open it in GNOME Software.
3. 3

   Create a site

   Open LocalPress, click the plus button, give your site a name and choose PHP.

• Podman, if it isn't installed already. Fedora Workstation includes it.
• A small system setting that lets regular users serve on port 80, so sites don't need :8080 in the address. Uninstalling LocalPress removes it.

On first launch, LocalPress starts Podman's user socket for you. There's no root daemon, no docker group and nothing to configure. If you already use Docker, LocalPress uses that instead.

If you'd rather do it yourself, two containers on a shared network are enough for a basic site:

podman network create wp

podman run -d --name wp-db --network wp \
  -e MARIADB_DATABASE=wordpress \
  -e MARIADB_USER=wordpress \
  -e MARIADB_PASSWORD=change-me \
  -e MARIADB_ROOT_PASSWORD=change-me-too \
  mariadb:11.4

podman run -d --name wp --network wp -p 8080:80 \
  -e WORDPRESS_DB_HOST=wp-db \
  -e WORDPRESS_DB_NAME=wordpress \
  -e WORDPRESS_DB_USER=wordpress \
  -e WORDPRESS_DB_PASSWORD=change-me \
  wordpress:latest

Then open http://localhost:8080 and finish the WordPress installer. This works, but you'll soon want more:

• WordPress files in a folder you can edit, owned by your user.
• The right SELinux label on that folder (:z on the mount), or PHP can't read it.
• A separate port, network and database for every site.
• A way for WordPress to reach its own URL, so WP-Cron and Site Health work.
• A different PHP version per project.

LocalPress handles all of these. See WordPress with Podman for how.

LocalPress is built and tested on Fedora 44 and should work on Fedora 40 and later. The current release is for ARM64 computers, including Apple Silicon Macs running Fedora Asahi Remix. An Intel and AMD build is on the way.