Installing and configuring Nginx on Linux

Comprehensive Guide to Installing and Configuring Nginx on Linux for Web Developers

Nginx is a high-performance web server that is also used as a reverse proxy, mail proxy, and HTTP cache. It is known for its stability, rich feature set, simple configuration, and low resource consumption. In this comprehensive guide, we will cover how to install, configure, and get your Nginx up and running on a Linux system.

Choosing Your Linux Distribution

Before diving into the installation process, it's important to choose a Linux distribution. Nginx can run on various distributions such as Ubuntu, CentOS, Debian, Fedora, and more. For the purposes of this guide, we will focus on installing Nginx on Ubuntu which is one of the most popular distributions especially for web development purposes.

Step 1: Installing Nginx

First, you need to update your package manager. On Ubuntu, you would use the apt package manager. Open your terminal and execute the following commands:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install nginx

After installing Nginx, the service should start automatically. To verify if Nginx is running, you can either check its status with Systemd or use your browser:

sudo systemctl status nginx

Alternatively, you can open a browser and type your server's IP address. If Nginx is running, you should see the default Nginx landing page.

Step 2: Configuring the Firewall

If your server has a firewall enabled, you will need to allow HTTP and HTTPS traffic. On Ubuntu, if you are using ufw (Uncomplicated Firewall), you can enable these easily:

sudo ufw allow 'Nginx Full'
sudo ufw reload

This sets the firewall to allow traffic on ports 80 (HTTP) and 443 (HTTPS).

Step 3: Managing Nginx Service

To start, stop, restart, and reload your Nginx service after making configuration changes, use the following commands:

sudo systemctl start nginx
sudo systemctl stop nginx
sudo systemctl restart nginx
sudo systemctl reload nginx

Using reload is generally safer than restart as it does not drop current connections.

Step 4: Configuring Nginx

Nginx configuration files are located in /etc/nginx. The main configuration file is /etc/nginx/nginx.conf. Virtual host configurations are typically held in /etc/nginx/sites-available with symbolic links in /etc/nginx/sites-enabled.

To set up a simple website:

Create a directory for your website:

sudo mkdir -p /var/www/mywebsite/html
sudo chown -R $USER:$USER /var/www/mywebsite/html

Create your index.html:

echo "<html><body><h1>Hello, Nginx!</h1></body></html>" | sudo tee /var/www/mywebsite/html/index.html

Set up a new virtual host: For instance, create a new configuration file: /etc/nginx/sites-available/mywebsite.

server {
   listen 80;
   server_name mywebsite.com www.mywebsite.com;

   location / {
       root /var/www/mywebsite/html;
       index index.html index.htm;
   }
}

Create a symbolic link to enable this site:

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

Test Nginx configuration for syntax errors:
```
sudo nginx -t
```
Reload Nginx:
```
sudo systemctl reload nginx
```

Step 5: Securing Nginx with SSL/TLS

For HTTPS, SSL/TLS certificates are a must. You can obtain these for free from Let's Encrypt. Certbot is a popular choice to get and install Let's Encrypt certificates.

Install Certbot and its Nginx plugin:

sudo apt install certbot python3-certbot-nginx

Run it to configure SSL automatically:

sudo certbot --nginx -d mywebsite.com -d www.mywebsite.com

Follow the instructions, and it should automatically update your Nginx configuration files with SSL settings and renewals.

Conclusion

Configuring Nginx doesn't have to be hard. With this basic setup, you now have a running web server capable of serving static content. For dynamic content, you can further explore using Nginx as a reverse proxy to pass requests to a backend server, like Node.js, Python Flask, or others.

As web technologies continuously evolve, keep learning and updating your skills to make optimal use of tools like Nginx. Happy coding!