The following configuration is tested on Ubuntu 18.04 and later versions, Debian 10 (Buster) and the Raspbian Buster Lite operating systems.

Install nginx and verify test server

Raspbian On RPI
If you are using Raspberry Pi, install Raspbian and take SSH of the board.

If you are using digitalocean to host your app or website, use this tutorial to create droplet and take SSH of the digitalocean droplet.

If you want to test the nginx configuration on your local Ubuntu/Debian system, open Terminal to proceed with the following tutorial.

First step is to update the repositories with the following command.

sudo apt update

Install the Nginx web server.

sudo apt install nginx

Check whether Nginx is running successfully with the following command.

sudo systemctl status nginx | grep "Active:"

The output should have active (running) in the result.

   Active: active (running) since Thu 2019-11-21 14:28:16 IST; 26s ago

If it’s not, there must be some problem with the installation.

Now, open the browser and,

  • If you are using raspberry pi, visit the raspberry pi IP address in the address bar.
  • If you are using digitalocean droplet, enter the droplet IP address in the address bar. IP address can get from digitalocean dashboard.
  • If you are using local Ubuntu/Debian system enter http://127.0.0.1 in the address bar.

The test server should be running and show the following greeting on the web page.

                Welcome to nginx!

If you see this page, the nginx web server is successfully installed and
working. Further configuration is required.

For online documentation and support please refer to nginx.org.
Commercial support is available at nginx.com.

Thank you for using nginx.

Configure the localhost or domain

There is a default config file present for localhost in the path /etc/nginx/sites-available/default. We will keep this for reference. Instead we will remove the shortcut of this file present in the folder /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/.

sudo rm /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/default

We will recreate the same file with our localhost / domain configuration.

sudo vi /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/default

If you don’t have any domain name to configure, skip this section and proceed to next for localhost configuration.

If domain name available :

You need to point your domain dns server settings to your app/website host provider. I bought my domain from Namecheap and I am using digitalocean to host my website and the instructions given here for changing my domain name dns server settings to digitalocean. The process is similar for any host provider.

Once the above step is completed, the domain settings might take upto 24 hrs to take effect.

Meanwhile, put the following configuration in the default configuration file.

server {
        listen 80;

        # Replace the following root path to your website or app folder
        root /path/to/your/website;

        # This is the order in which server searches for the file names.
        # If index.html is not found, it will search for index.htm and so on.
	index index.html index.htm index.nginx-debian.html;

        # Replace the following domain name with yours.
        # Or simply put localhost if domain is not available.
        server_name domain.com www.domain.com;
	location / {
		# First attempt to serve request as file, then
		# as directory, then fall back to displaying a 404.
		try_files $uri $uri/ =404;
	}
}

Don’t forge to replace the domain.com, www.domain.com with your domain name.

Replace root path also with your website path for any one of above configurations.

If domain name is not available :

You can still configure server with localhost on your device. Put the following content in that file

server {
        listen 80;

        # Replace the following root path to your website or app folder
        root /path/to/your/website;

        # This is the order in which server searches for the file names.
        # If index.html is not found, it will search for index.htm and so on.
	index index.html index.htm index.nginx-debian.html;

        # Replace the following domain name with yours.
        # Or simply put localhost if domain is not available.
        server_name localhost;
	location / {
		# First attempt to serve request as file, then
		# as directory, then fall back to displaying a 404.
		try_files $uri $uri/ =404;
	}
}

Replace root path with your website path for any one of above configurations.

Check the configuration syntax before reloading the server

Before reloading the configuration, test whether the configuration syntax is correct or not with the following command.

sudo nginx -t

If syntax is correct, it will display following output.

nginx: the configuration file /etc/nginx/nginx.conf syntax is ok
nginx: configuration file /etc/nginx/nginx.conf test is successful

Reload the configuration with the following command.

sudo systemctl reload nginx

Now in the browser address bar,

  • If domain name is configured, visit the domain name in the address bar.
  • If domain name is not configured, visit the IP address of digitalocean droplet or Raspberry PI or http://127.0.0.1 depends on the platform you are using.

The above configuration for a single website/app is called virtual host. We can configure more than one virtual hosts within the same config file.

Configure multiple virtual hosts for multiple apps or websites.

First remove the configuration file created above to start fresh with multiple virtual hosts.

sudo rm /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/default

In the following configuration, we will be creating three virtual hosts with and without domain names.

If domain names available :

We will be creating the virtual hosts for these three domains nayab.xyz, asstracker.in and the blog blog.nayab.xyz.

Replace above domain names with yours.

Create same file with our configuration

sudo vi /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/default

server {
	# Domain name below.
	server_name www.asstracker.in asstracker.in;

        # Replace the following root path to your website or app folder
	root  /home/domain;

        # This is the order in which server searches for the file names.
        # If index.html is not found, it will search for index.htm and so on.
        index index.html index.htm index.nginx-debian.html;

        location / {
	        # First attempt to serve request as file, then
	        # as directory, then fall back to displaying a 404.
	        try_files $uri $uri/ =404;
        }
}
server {
	# Domain name below.
	server_name nayab.xyz www.nayab.xyz;

        # Replace the following root path to your website or app folder
	root  /home/website;

        # This is the order in which server searches for the file names.
        # If index.html is not found, it will search for index.htm and so on.
        index index.html index.htm index.nginx-debian.html;

        location / {
	        # First attempt to serve request as file, then
	        # as directory, then fall back to displaying a 404.
	        try_files $uri $uri/ =404;
        }
}
server {
	# Domain name below.
	server_name blog.nayab.xyz;

        # Replace the following root path to your website or app folder
	root  /home/blog;

        # This is the order in which server searches for the file names.
        # If index.html is not found, it will search for index.htm and so on.
        index index.html index.htm index.nginx-debian.html;

        location / {
	        # First attempt to serve request as file, then
	        # as directory, then fall back to displaying a 404.
	        try_files $uri $uri/ =404;
        }
}

Replace root path with your website or app path for everywhere.

Before reloading the configuration, test whether the configuration syntax is correct or not with the following command.

sudo nginx -t

If syntax is correct, it will display following output.

nginx: the configuration file /etc/nginx/nginx.conf syntax is ok
nginx: configuration file /etc/nginx/nginx.conf test is successful

Reload the configuration with the following command.

sudo systemctl reload nginx

Now, open the browser and browse the websites using the domain names.

If domain names not available :

server {
	listen 3000;

        # Replace the following root path to your website or app folder
	root  /home/domain;

        # This is the order in which server searches for the file names.
        # If index.html is not found, it will search for index.htm and so on.
        index index.html index.htm index.nginx-debian.html;

        location / {
	        # First attempt to serve request as file, then
	        # as directory, then fall back to displaying a 404.
	        try_files $uri $uri/ =404;
        }
}
server {
	listen 4000;

        # Replace the following root path to your website or app folder
	root  /home/website;

        # This is the order in which server searches for the file names.
        # If index.html is not found, it will search for index.htm and so on.
        index index.html index.htm index.nginx-debian.html;

        location / {
	        # First attempt to serve request as file, then
	        # as directory, then fall back to displaying a 404.
	        try_files $uri $uri/ =404;
        }
}
server {
	listen 5000;

        # Replace the following root path to your website or app folder
	root  /home/blog;

        # This is the order in which server searches for the file names.
        # If index.html is not found, it will search for index.htm and so on.
        index index.html index.htm index.nginx-debian.html;

        location / {
	        # First attempt to serve request as file, then
	        # as directory, then fall back to displaying a 404.
	        try_files $uri $uri/ =404;
        }
}

Replace root path with your website or app path for everywhere.

Before reloading the configuration, test whether the configuration syntax is correct or not with the following command.

sudo nginx -t

If syntax is correct, it will display following output.

nginx: the configuration file /etc/nginx/nginx.conf syntax is ok
nginx: configuration file /etc/nginx/nginx.conf test is successful

Reload the configuration with the following command.

sudo systemctl reload nginx

Now browse the domain names or IP address along with the port number in the browser address bar.

A few examples,

  • 192.168.1.10:3000, 192.168.1.10:4000 and 192.168.1.10:5000 for Raspberry Pi. Or
  • http://206.189.132.174:3000, http://206.189.132.174:4000 and http://206.189.132.174:5000 for digitalocean droplets. Or
  • localhost:3000, localhost:4000 and localhost:5000 if you are configuring Nginx server on your local system.

Install SSL certificates for domains and redirect http to https using certbot

We are going to use a tool called certbot which automates the ssl certificates installation process for domains.

To install Let's encrypt certificates for domain name, in ther terminal, execute the following commands

sudo apt-get install certbot python3-certbot-nginx

sudo certbot --nginx

Follow the onscreen instructions. The certbot will install SSL certificates and modify the Nginx configuration file so that all http traffic will redirect to https.

Some troubleshooting commands

To see all the configuration at one place

nginx -T

To check whether the new configuration is without any errors before reloading nginx server,

nginx -t

To check with which configurations nginx is built,

nginx -V