How to Configure NGINX

NGINX is a lightweight, high-performance web server designed for high-traffic use cases. The most common use cases are HTTP cache at scale, load balancing, and reverse proxy.

What makes NGINX stand apart is its capability to serve static content such as HTML and Media files effectively. It uses an event-driven model to provide predictable performance even when the load is high.

This guide shows you several different NGINX server configurations.

NGINX Config: Directives, Blocks, and Contexts

All NGINX configuration files are located in the /etc/nginx/ directory. The primary configuration file is /etc/nginx/nginx.conf.

The way NGINX configurations are setup is by:

directives - they are NGINX configuration options
Blocks (also known as contexts) - Groups in which Directives are organized

Note that any character after # in a line becomes a comment. And NGINX does not interpret it.

To better understand directives and blocks, take a look at the condensed copy of /etc/nginx/nginx conf below:

File: /etc/nginx/nginx.conf

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user  nginx;
worker_processes  1;

error_log  /var/log/nginx/error.log warn;
pid        /var/run/nginx.pid;

events {
       . . .
}

http {
       . . .
}

There are 4 directives in this snippet in the main context :

user
worker_processes
error_log
pid

Additional directives can be placed inside of events{…}, http{…} and so on. To read more about directives, visit the official NGINX documentation.

Let’s take a look at these blocks and their NGINX configurations.

NGINX Configuration - http Block

http blocks contain directives for handling web traffic. These directives are often universal as they are passed on to all website configurations NGINX serves. A list of available directives for http blocks are available on official NGINX http block documentation.

File: /etc/nginx/nginx.conf

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http {
    include       /etc/nginx/mime.types;
    default_type  application/octet-stream;

    log_format  main  '$remote_addr - $remote_user [$time_local] "$request" '
                      '$status $body_bytes_sent "$http_referer" '
                      '"$http_user_agent" "$http_x_forwarded_for"';

    access_log  /var/log/nginx/access.log  main;

    sendfile        on;
    #tcp_nopush     on;

    keepalive_timeout  65;

    #gzip  on;

    include /etc/nginx/conf.d/*.conf;
}

In the http block there’s an include directive that tells NGINX where website configuration files are located. It changes depending upon your source of NGINX installation:

Installation from official NGINX repository: include directive is include /etc/nginx/conf.d/*.conf;. Every website you host with NGINX gets it’s own configuration file in /etc/nginx/conf.d/, with names formatted as example.com.conf.
Installation from Debian or Ubuntu repositories: the include directive here would now be include /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/*; With site configuration file stored in /etc/nginx/sites-available/

NGINX Configuration - Server Blocks

Regardless of the installation source, server configuration files contain a server block for a website. Here’s an example server block:

File: /etc/nginx/conf.d/example.com.conf

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server {
    listen         80 default_server;
    listen         [::]:80 default_server;
    server_name    example.com www.example.com;
    root           /var/www/example.com;
    index          index.html;
    try_files $uri /index.html;
}

There are several directives in this block that are worth taking a look at:

listen - tells NGINX the hostname/IP and the TCP port where it should listen for HTTP connections
server_name: allows multiple domains to be served from a single IP address. Ideally, it should be created per domain or site. Based on the request header it receives, the server decides which domain to serve.

NGINX Server Blocks Configuration Example - server_name

Here are some examples for server_name NGINX configuration based on sites you want to host on the server.

Configuration for processing requests for both example.com and www.example.com:

File: /etc/nginx/conf.d/example.com.conf

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server_name example.com www.example.com;

Configuration for processing requests for all subdomains for example.com:

File: /etc/nginx/conf.d/example.com.conf

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server_name *.example.com;
server_name .example.com;

Configuration for processing requests of all domains that start with example.:

File: /etc/nginx/conf.d/example.com.conf

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server_name example.*;

NGINX Configuration of Location Blocks

Location directives cover requests for specific files and folders. It also allows NGINX to respond to requests for resources within the server. Here’s an NGINX location blocks configuration: