Book Image

Nginx HTTP Server - Second Edition

By : Clement Nedelcu
Book Image

Nginx HTTP Server - Second Edition

By: Clement Nedelcu

Overview of this book

<p>Nginx is a lightweight HTTP server designed for high-traffic websites, with network scalability as the primary objective. With the advent of high speed Internet access, short loading times and fast transfer rates have become a necessity. This free, open source solution will either come as a full replacement of other software such as Apache, or stand in front of your existing infrastructure to improve its overall speed.</p> <p>"Nginx HTTP Server - Second Edition" provides a detailed guide to setting up Nginx in different ways that correspond to actual production situations: as a standalone server, as a reverse proxy, interacting with applications via FastCGI and more. In addition, the complete directive reference will be your best friend at all stages of the configuration and maintenance processes.</p> <p>This book is the perfect companion for both Nginx beginners and experienced administrators. For beginners, it will take you through the complete process of setting up this lightweight HTTP server on your system and configuring its various modules to get it to do exactly what you need, in a fast and secure way. For more experienced administrators, this book provides different angles of approach that can help you make the most of your current infrastructure. Nginx can be employed in many situations, whether you are looking to construct an entirely new web-serving architecture or simply want to integrate an efficient tool to optimize your site loading speeds.</p> <p>This book takes you through the setup and configuration of Nginx by detailing every step of the way, from downloading to configuring your server in a selection of common architectures.</p>
Table of Contents (17 chapters)
Nginx HTTP Server Second Edition
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Directive Index
Index

Summary


This chapter covered a number of critical steps. We first made sure that your system contained all required components for compiling Nginx. We then proceeded to select the proper version branch for your usage—will you be using the stable version or a more advanced yet potentially unstable one? After downloading the source and configuring the compilation process by enabling or disabling features and modules such as SSL, GeoIP, and more, we compiled the application and installed it on the system in the directory of your choice. We created an init script and modified the system boot sequence to schedule for the service to be started.

From this point on, Nginx is installed on your server and automatically starts with the system. Your web server is functional, though it does not yet answer the most basic functionality—serving a website. The first step towards hosting a website will be to establish a configuration file. The next chapter will cover the basic configuration of Nginx and will teach you how to optimize performance based on the expected audience and system resources.