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David Chelly
David Chelly · Nov 2024 — Feb 2026

Apache → Docker + Nginx migration

Software Engineer (Migration lead)

The team was running production on Apache + XAMPP — fragile, hard to reproduce, painful to onboard onto. I led the migration to Docker + Nginx.

Docker Nginx DevOps
legacy XAMPP → modern Docker stack

problem

  • → XAMPP setups drifted between developer machines — "works on mine" was a daily blocker.
  • → Apache config lived in someone's head, not in version control.
  • → Spinning up a new environment took hours of manual setup.

approach

  • → Containerized the application and its dependencies with Docker.
  • → Replaced Apache with Nginx, with config checked into the repo.
  • → Completed the local migration end-to-end and prepared the production cutover.

result

  • → Reproducible local environments — clone, `docker compose up`, done.
  • → Infrastructure-as-code: every config change reviewed in git.
  • → Production deployment unblocked — same image runs locally and in prod.
stack
Docker Docker Compose Nginx PHP

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