Nginx is a complex piece of software that will help you implement your own part of the World Wide Web—one of the killer applications of the Internet as a whole. Although seeming to be simple, the Web and the underlying HTTP have a lot of intricate details that may require special attention. Nginx gives you the power to pay that attention to those details by means of the extensive configuration language. Following the grand UNIX tradition of human-readable and writable text configuration files, Nginx expects a certain level of understanding and zeal from you so that it can serve in the best way possible. It also means that there is freedom and huge potential for mistakes.
The main goal of this chapter is to lead you through the way Nginx is configured and show you some of the areas that are prone to errors.
You will find further:
Configuration syntax with description and examples
Description of all files in the default configuration bundled with Nginx
Some mistakes you could make with examples from the default configuration and techniques to avoid them