NGINX

Websites can be hosted with NGINX. NGINX can be installed by executing the following command:

sudo apt install nginx

Configuration

NGINX configuration files live inside the /etc/nginx/ directory. The two main subdirectories in there are /etc/nginx/sites-available/ and /etc/nginx/ sites-enabled/. The idea is that you can make a site configuration file in sites-available and when it’s ready, you make a symbolic link to it in sites-enabled/ which will activate it.

Make a configuration file for each domain. It is recommended to name the configuration file <domain-name-without-top-level-domain>.conf. For this website the configuration file could be th7mo.conf. A minimal configuration looks like this:

server {
    server_name th7mo.com ;
    root /var/www/th7mo ;
    index index.html ;

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

    listen 80 ;
    listen [::]:80 ;
}

• server_name is the domain and base path of the website.
• root is the root of the project files. This directory should contain the website source code.
• index specifies the file that represents the landing page of the website (when navigating to the address specified in server_name)
• location / is a block that specifies NGINX how to look up files. The line below specifies to look in the root directory and throw a 404 Not Found error if failing to find the default file specified at index.
• listen 80 ; specifies NGINX to listen for connections at port 80 for IPv4.
• listen [::]:80 ; specifies the same but for IPv6.

All these components are required for the most minimal configuration. Without the listen for both IP protocols certbot can not generate SSL certificates.

Redirecting subdomains

One of the most common use cases for redirecting subdomains is the www subdomain. Firstly make sure proper DNS configuration is set up for the subdomain. The if statement is used to check and to redirect subdomains:

server {
    server_name th7mo.com www.th7mo.com ;
    if ($host = www.th7mo.com) {
        return 301 https://th7mo.com$request_uri;
    }

    # all other configuration below ...
}

In the example above both th7mo.com and www.th7mo.com are specified in the server_name field. In the if statement we check and redirect if the visitor of the website visits www.th7mo.com to https://th7mo.com with the path that comes after it.

Link the configuration

When to configuration is complete, make a symbolic link to the /etc/nginx/ sites-enabled/ directory:

ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/<config-file> /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/

Only when a symbolic link is present in the sites-enabled/ directory NGINX actually serves the website to users.

Load changes

Every time the configuration for NGINX changes, NGINX needs to be restarted for changes to take effect. Run nginx -t to verify if the configuration file is correct according to NGINX. If the configuration is correct, execute the following command to restart NGINX:

sudo systemctl restart nginx

See also

• Most of the information here I learned from Luke Smith. He explains how to set up NGINX at his landchad.net website.