To Install Nginx

sudo apt-get install nginx

Setting up Virtual Hosts

Nginx, like Apache, supports name-based virtual hosting, where the sites are hosted according to their (sub)domain name.

Setting up a Standard Virtual Host

The default nginx config works well for a standard Virtual Host.

Lets take a look.

server {
     
            #replace <your_ip_here> with your ip address.
            listen   <your_ip_here>:80; ## listen for ipv4; this line is default and implied
            #listen   [::]:80 default ipv6only=on; ## listen for ipv6
     
            #location of your files
            root /srv;
            index index.html index.htm;
     
            # The name of your domain (virtual hosts)
            server_name localhost;
     
            location / {
                    # First attempt to serve request as file, then
                    # as directory, then fall back to index.html
                    try_files $uri $uri/ /index.html /index.php;
                    # Uncomment to enable naxsi on this location
                    #include /etc/nginx/naxsi.rules;
                    #autoindex on;
            }
     
            # Only for nginx-naxsi : process denied requests
            #location /RequestDenied {
            #       # For example, return an error code
            #       return 418;
            #}
     
            #error_page 404 /404.html;
     
            # redirect server error pages to the static page /50x.html
            #
            #error_page 500 502 503 504 /50x.html;
            #location = /50x.html {
            #       root /usr/share/nginx/www;
            #}
     
            # pass the PHP scripts to FastCGI server listening on 127.0.0.1:9000
            #
            #location ~ \.php$ {
            #       fastcgi_split_path_info ^(.+\.php)(/.+)$;
            #        # NOTE: You should have "cgi.fix_pathinfo = 0;" in php.ini
            #
            #        # With php5-cgi alone:
            #       fastcgi_pass 127.0.0.1:9000;
                    # With php5-fpm:
            #       fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php5-fpm.sock;
            #       fastcgi_index index.php;
            #        include fastcgi_params;
            #}
     
            # deny access to .htaccess files, if Apache's document root
            # concurs with nginx's one
            #
            location ~ /\.ht {
                    deny all;
            }
    }

Following the commented instructions above; setting the ip address, the default directory, and your domain, you can create your own virtual host.

Afterwords, simply save the file in

/etc/nginx/sites-enabled

and restart nginx with

sudo /etc/init.d/nginx restart

Setting up a Virtual Host with SSL

Setting up a passthrough Virtual Host

Setting up Nginx Backends

Nginx with PHP

Nginx uses a fastcgi backend to communicate with other servers. Therefore, we install the php5 FPM server for nginx to pass php files onto.

sudo apt-get install php5-fpm

The default nginx configuration that comes with Ubuntu already contains the configuration for php-fpm. Simply remove the comments on the php block so that

# pass the PHP scripts to FastCGI server listening on 127.0.0.1:9000
            #
            #location ~ \.php$ {
            #       fastcgi_split_path_info ^(.+\.php)(/.+)$;
            #        # NOTE: You should have "cgi.fix_pathinfo = 0;" in php.ini
            #
            #        # With php5-cgi alone:
            #       fastcgi_pass 127.0.0.1:9000;
                    # With php5-fpm:
            #       fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php5-fpm.sock;
            #       fastcgi_index index.php;
            #        include fastcgi_params;
            #}

looks like

# pass the PHP scripts to FastCGI server listening on 127.0.0.1:9000
            #
            location ~ \.php$ {
                    fastcgi_split_path_info ^(.+\.php)(/.+)$;
            #        # NOTE: You should have "cgi.fix_pathinfo = 0;" in php.ini
            #
            #        # With php5-cgi alone:
            #       fastcgi_pass 127.0.0.1:9000;
                    # With php5-fpm:
                    fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php5-fpm.sock;
                    fastcgi_index index.php;
                    include fastcgi_params;
            #}

Afterwords, restart nginx

sudo service nginx restart

Ubuntu Documentation

Nginx