Nginx Quick References

This page shows how to create an Nginx site.

1. Choose an Nginx template.

HTML/PHP Site

To host local files create the directories to for site example.com and www.example.com using these commands.

Create directory
mkdir -p /var/www/example.com/html
Create index.html file
echo "<h1>Hello world</h1>" > /var/www/example.com/html/index.html
Create a phpinfo page
echo "<?php phpinfo(); ?>" > /var/www/example.com/html/7yLJSaumNw.php

Then, create the Nginx .conf file.

nano /etc/nginx/sites-available/sub.example.com
HTML/PHP Nginx Template file
server {
    listen 80;
    listen [::]:80;

    root /var/www/example.com/html;
    index index.html index.htm index.nginx-debian.html index.php;

    server_name example.com www.example.com;

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

    # pass PHP scripts to FastCGI server
    #
    location ~ \.php$ {
        include snippets/fastcgi-php.conf;
        fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php/php7.4-fpm.sock;
    }
}

Reverse Proxy

Create a new site called sub.example.com that is a reverse proxy for a hosted application

  • Replace the port number in proxy_pass http://localhost:8888;

nano /etc/nginx/sites-available/sub.example.com
Reverse Proxy Nginx Template file
server {
    listen 80;

    server_name sub.example.com;

    location / {
        proxy_pass http://localhost:8888;
        proxy_set_header Host $host;
        proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
        proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
    }
}

2. Enable or Disable an Nginx site

Enable an Nginx site

  • Use ln -s to create a symbolic link to sites-enabled

ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/sub.example.com /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/

Disable an Nginx site

  • You can remove or delete the symbolic link to disable a site or remove an invalid configuration.

rm /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/sub-to-disable.example.com

Verify if site is enabled

  • Perform a directory listing of sites-enabled to determine if it contains a link to a config

ls -lh /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/

3. Verify and Apply Configuration

Check for configuration issues

nginx -t

Apply Config Changes

  • Restart Nginx to apply config changes using systemctl

systemctl restart nginx

  • Check the status of Nginx using systemctl

systemctl status nginx