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

Chapter 2. Basic Nginx Configuration

In this chapter, we will begin to establish an appropriate configuration for the web server. For this purpose, we first need to approach the topic of syntax used in the configuration files. Then we need to understand the various directives that will let you optimize your web server for different traffic patterns and hardware setups. Finally, we will create some test pages to make sure that everything has been done correctly and that the configuration is valid. We will only approach the basic configuration directives here. The following chapters will detail more advanced topics such as HTTP module configuration and usage, creating virtual hosts, and more.

This chapter covers the following topics:

  • Presentation of the configuration syntax

  • Basic configuration directives

  • Establishing an appropriate configuration for your profile

  • Serving a test website

  • Testing and maintaining your web server