A mentioned earlier, Nginx can be used in a number of ways. One of them is as a webserver. A webserver is a software that sends webpages stored in webservers to users on request. By default, the web uses HTTP protocol on port 80 which sends data in unencrypted format. Nginx supports both HTTP and HTTPS meaning that we can send data securely. Nginx configuration files are found in the /etc/nginx directory. We majourly make changes to the sites-available directory which can be structured to house multiple sites each described as a configuration file with the .conf extension After creating a site configuration file, we are supposed to publish the site to the sites-enabled. This is done by creating a symbolic link with the command ln -s ~/etc/nginx/sites-available/default ~/etc/nginx/sites-enabled/default The command above basically links the site-enbaled/default and for the changes to take place, we need to restart nginx using the command sudo nginx -s reload

Connfigurations#

By default, nginx uses one configuration file /etc/nginx/nginx.conf especially if nginx is installed with a package manager. We put our custom configurations in the /etc/nginx/sites-available and they can only be served if they are linked with the sites-enablesdirectory

** example of an Nginx config file**


http {

    ##
    # Basic Settings
    ##

    sendfile on;
    tcp_nopush on;
    tcp_nodelay on;
    keepalive_timeout 65;
    types_hash_max_size 2048;
    # server_tokens off;

    # server_names_hash_bucket_size 64;
    # server_name_in_redirect off;

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

    ##
    # SSL Settings
    ##

    ssl_protocols TLSv1 TLSv1.1 TLSv1.2 TLSv1.3; # Dropping SSLv3, ref: POODLE
    ssl_prefer_server_ciphers on;

    ##
    # Logging Settings
    ##

    access_log /var/log/nginx/access.log;
    error_log /var/log/nginx/error.log;

    ##
    # Gzip Settings
    ##

    gzip on;

    # gzip_vary on;
    # gzip_proxied any;
    # gzip_comp_level 6;
    # gzip_buffers 16 8k;
    # gzip_http_version 1.1;
    # gzip_types text/plain text/css application/json application/javascript text/xml application/xml application/xml+rss text/javascript;

    ##
    # Virtual Host Configs
    ##

    include /etc/nginx/conf.d/*.conf;
    include /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/*;
}

The key-pairs above are called directives and directives always end with a ;
Each directive has a specific meaning and defines a feature in context of an application
The ones ones the the braces {} are called contexts. Contexts also contains directives
everything with a $ is a varriable we can access in the config file
the include statement is used to import another config file that build up on the config file

Directive Blocks

They are enclosed in a module
The root config is called the main block
Blocks can be nested together to build up on a logic

http{
    server{
    listen 80;
    server_name example.com;
    access_log /var/log/nginx/example.com.log;
    location ^~/admin{
        index index.php;
    }
 	}
}

I the example above, http is the main block that houses the server block
The server block contains configurations for the example.com website
The acces_log directive givses us a location where to store our logs

Nginx Configuration example

#/etc/nginx/conf.d/example.com
  1 server{
  2     listen 80;
  3     server_name example.com www.example.com;
  4     root /var/www/example.com/html;
  5. }

The example above will is a configuaration of our site names example.com that will be served on port 80
The root directive specifies where to file the files to serve

Using Nginx as a Web server

Connfigurations#