Quick post here.. my last post focused on hosting multiple Wordpress sites on a remote DigitalOcean instance, which is grand and all but most developers want to run things locally first to test things out.

Here’s a quick guide to getting things ready locally before running the steps in the previous post

1. Install DockerToolbox from Docker.io.
   • This also installs Kitematic, which is a handy GUI for managing Docker containers.
2. Start Docker/Kitematic and run the following command to get the IP Address of the underlying virtual machine:

   • ‘default’ is the name of the VM Docker Machines creates on setup.

     docker-machine ip default
     

3. Update your hosts file to point to the expected SSL domains:

   • On OSX, run the following command in the terminal:

     sudo nano /etc/hosts
     

   • Insert a line for each SSL certificate you want to use (The I.P. Addr is whatever the boot2docker vm IP Addr is) e.g:

     192.168.99.100 capslocknotificationapp.com
     192.168.99.100 <SSL-Cert-Name>
     ...
     

   • Sometimes you need to refresh the DNS Cache:

     dscacheutil -flushcache; sudo killall -HUP mDNSResponder
     

4. Get your SSL Certificates and create a folder to place them in.
   • Ideally, create a sub-folder in the local Kitematic directory (you can change the where a Docker container’s volume points to in Kitematic)

   • On OSX, Kitematic defaults to /Users/<username>/Documents/Kitematic

     mkdir /Users/<username>/Documents/Kitematic/nginx-proxy/root/certs
     

5. Run the steps in the previous post.

This should get you up and running with the ability to test HTTPS connections.

Note: Don’t forget to remove the host file redirects before testing the real site!