I will setup a very simple html page with docker and nginx. Source files can be found here: in folder recipe-01 https://github.com/ikknd/docker-study 1. Create a project folder setup: /var/www/docker-study.loc/recipe-01 -> /docker -> /html In "html" folder I will create index.html file, that simply says: "I work inside docker!" In "docker" folder I will keep docker related files and configs. 2. Create nginx config site.conf in "docker" folder: 3. Edit /etc/hosts file on host machine, and add a record: 127.0.0.1 myapp.loc 4. Create docker-compose.yml file in "docker" folder: Here I do several things: point port 80 from inside container to port 80 on my host machine copy html folder on my host machine to /var/www/myapp folder inside of container copy site.conf nginx config file to /etc/nginx/conf.d/site.conf location in container Note that we can point not only directories from host machines to inside of container, but also individual files. 5. Go to /var/www/docker-study.loc/recipe-01/docker/ and execute: docker-compose up -d If I now try myapp.loc/ in browser, I will see: "I work inside docker!". In several simple steps, I got html file to be served via nginx, and got local domain name to work with docker setup.