added deployment instructions to documentation

README.md

-Docker Compose and Docker files for deploying the development environment for the Politics of Patent case study site.
+# Archival Conversations patents data search engine
 
-Deployed Solr for .rtf indexing using instructions at: https://github.com/docker-solr/docker-solr
+This repository contains the Docker Compose, Nginx, PHP, and Solr config files for deploying the development environment for the Archival Conversations patents data search engine site.
+
+## to deploy environment
+
+### config.env
+
+To deploy this environment, first copy config.env.template to a new file, config.env. Fill in the appropriate environment variables.
+
+Note that on Mac the PHP container has to communicate with the Solr container using the hostname 'host.docker.internal' rather than 'localhost' or '127.0.0.1': https://stackoverflow.com/questions/24319662/from-inside-of-a-docker-container-how-do-i-connect-to-the-localhost-of-the-mach
+
+On Linux, you can use the container name e.g. 'solr' as the Solr hostname in config.env.
+
+### Docker Compose
+
+In the command line, navigate to the directory where this repository is stored on your local machine and run:
+
+`docker-compose up -d --build`
+
+Docker should build the application environment comprising a PHP container (including ImageMagick), an Apache Solr container (deployed Solr for .rtf indexing using instructions at: https://github.com/docker-solr/docker-solr), and an Nginx web server to serve the website.
+
+The website should then be available in the browser at 'localhost:8080'.
+
+To take down the environment, run:
+
+`docker-compose down`
+
+## populating Apache Solr
+
+In order to fill the site with documents, you will have to populate the Apache Solr search engine. There is a solr_import.sh script to help with this. Place whatever files you want indexed in a directory called 'data' within the main directory.
+
+In solr_import.sh, change the directory to point to the main directory and, if necessary, change the location parameters for the various cores.
+
+We use different Solr cores for the different themes on the site: 'all' is a core containing all documents while 'active', 'expanding', etc. contain only documents for that theme.
+
+### legacy Solr commands
+
+This section should be fully superseded by solr_import.sh and including the Solr config in the repository. These are left here for reference.
 
 Created core using:
 
 Add files to Solr using:
 
 `docker run --rm -v "/Users/ad7588/Downloads/2018 (10381):/2018" --network=host solr:latest post -c epo_data /2018`
-
-Note that on Mac the PHP container has to communicate with the Solr container using the hostname 'host.docker.internal' rather than 'localhost' or '127.0.0.1': https://stackoverflow.com/questions/24319662/from-inside-of-a-docker-container-how-do-i-connect-to-the-localhost-of-the-mach
-
-On Ubuntu, you can use the container name e.g. 'solr' as the Solr hostname in config.env.

config.env.template

 SOLR_HOSTNAME=
 # Solr port, usually 8983
 SOLR_PORT=
-# Solr core
+# Solr core, usually all
 SOLR_CORE=
 
 # OPS API variables
 # Hostname for OPS API, usually https://ops.epo.org
 OPS_URL=
-# Hostname for OPS API for images, for some reason different to above
+# Hostname for OPS API for images for some reason different to above, usually http://ops.epo.org
 OPS_URL_IMAGES=
 # API credentials from OPS https://developers.epo.org/
 CONSUMER_KEY=