> The Dockerfiles are kind of surprising since they read more like a an ansible-playbook than like a Dockerfile. This one image has it all - php, nginx, mariadb, phpmyadmin and who knows what else [4]. It's an interesting approach to Docker images, certainly against the recommendation but might have some good reasoning for something as special as WordPress.

i can totally see why they would go that route, even if unconventional. those are all the tools necessary for a WordPress installation, and if you wanted to go the conventional route, you'd have to run each one in a separate container and use something like compose to bring them all together - which can be a little tricky to get your head around.

by contrast, having only one Docker image to deploy means no leeway for the developer to get anything wrong. it's a known-good distribution of all of the tools, pre-configured to work together with each other seamlessly.