Nginx - How to use

Commands

• For Installing:

sudo apt update

sudo apt upgrade

sudo apt install nginx

• For starting:

sudo systemctl start nginx

sudo systemctl enable nginx

• For checking the status:

sudo systemctl status nginx

• For reloading anytime, any config file has changed:

sudo systemctl reload nginx

• For restarting:

sudo systemctl restart nginx

• Test the Nginx configuration for syntax errors:

sudo nginx -t

Uses

Nginx serves many purposes, some of them are:

1. Web Server

   Default Configurations

   After installing Nginx, open your web browser and navigate to http://your_server_ip. You should see the Nginx default welcome page.

   Default page configurations can be seen at → /etc/nginx/sites-available/default

    server {
    listen 80;  # Listen on port 80, the default HTTP port
    server_name localhost;  # The server name, here it is set to localhost
   
    # root and index are directives or keywords
    root /var/www/html;  # The root directory where files are served from
    index index.html index.htm index.nginx-debian.html;  # The default files to serve
   
    location / {
        try_files $uri $uri/ =404;  # Try to serve the requested URI, if not found return a 404
        }
    }
   

   • We can serve static files using this process.

   • use <domain_name> instead of localhost for serving the index.html page when opening the <domain_name>.

How to serve static files on different domain names

1️⃣ Create a new config file

    sudo nano /etc/nginx/sites-available/practice1

Add this:

    server {
        listen 80;
        server_name practice1.heysohail.me;

        root /var/www/html/practice1;
        index index.html;

        location / {
            try_files $uri $uri/ =404;
        }
    }

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2️⃣ Create the directory and make your index.html there

    sudo mkdir -p /var/www/html/practice1
    sudo vim /var/www/html/practice1/index.html

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3️⃣ Enable the config

    sudo ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/practice1 /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/

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4️⃣ Restart Nginx

    sudo systemctl restart nginx

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Now, practice1.heysohail.me will serve files from /var/www/html/practice1/.

2. Reverse Proxy

3. Rate Limiter

4. Cache

5. Load Balancer

📌 We will be covering the left topics in the coming days. Stay tuned!