Installation: Docker

Docker and Docker Compose are the fastest and cleanest way to run Paragrafy.

Prerequisites

Docker & Docker Compose installed on the server.

Quick Guide

Clone the entire repository (not just the Docker files!):
Terminal window
```
git clone https://github.com/mineco-de/Paragrafy.git && cd Paragrafy
```
The image is built from this local checkout (COPY . /var/www/html/ in the Dockerfile) — it no longer fetches the code from GitHub itself, so that docker compose up -d --build reliably uses your current state instead of getting stuck on an old Docker layer cache.
Start the container in the background:
Terminal window
```
docker compose up -d --build
```

Persistence

docker-compose.yaml mounts ./data to /var/www/html/data and sets PARAGRAFY_DATA_DIR=/var/www/html/data — that’s where paragrafy_data.sqlite, config.php, /backups, and an optional .env.local live. Without this volume, the database and admin credentials are lost on every --build. The container automatically sets the correct file permissions on this folder at startup (via docker-entrypoint.sh), even if the host directory didn’t exist beforehand.

For a bare-metal/Apache setup (see Installation: Apache), PARAGRAFY_DATA_DIR isn’t needed — the database and config then live directly in the project folder as usual.

Next, continue with Initial Setup & Cron Jobs.