Nginx [engine x] is an HTTP and reverse proxy server, as well as a mail proxy server, written by Igor Sysoev. Due to its high performance out-of-the-box, it's become one of the world's most popular web servers.

Add Nginx to Sources

As per the official Nginx docs (http://nginx.org/en/download.html).

sudo vi /etc/apt/sources.list

Add the following lines to the end of file:

deb http://nginx.org/packages/ubuntu/ lucid nginx
deb-src http://nginx.org/packages/ubuntu/ lucid nginx

Add the Key

sudo wget http://nginx.org/keys/nginx_signing.key
sudo apt-key add nginx_signing.key
sudo aptitude update

Install Nginx

The -v switch shows the Nginx version number.

sudo aptitude install nginx
sudo nginx -v

Configure Nginx

Check how many cores our server is running and configure Nginx.

grep processor /proc/cpuinfo
sudo vi /etc/nginx/nginx.conf

This configuration is based on 4 cores, which we'll map to workerprocesses. The default setting for gziptypes has a MIME type error, so replace as per below.

worker_processes 4;
worker_connections 768;
keepalive_timeout 3;
gzip on;
gzip_disable "msie6";
gzip_vary on;
gzip_proxied any;
gzip_comp_level 6;
gzip_types text/plain text/xml text/css text/javascript application/json application/javascript application/x-javascript application/xml application/xhtml+xml application/rss+xml;

Configure Virtual Hosts

Create hosting folders and a config file for our virtual host.

sudo mkdir -p /srv/www/example.com/web
sudo mkdir -p /srv/www/example.com/logs
sudo vi /etc/nginx/sites-available/example.com

Listen on port 80, redirect www, and set paths.

index index.htm index.html index.php;
server {
    listen 80;
    server_name www.example.com;
    rewrite ^ $scheme://example.com$request_uri? permanent;
}
server {
    listen 80;
    server_name example.com;
    access_log  /srv/www/example.com/logs/access.log;
    error_log   /srv/www/example.com/logs/error.log;
    root /srv/www/example.com/web;
}

Enable the Website

Create a symbolic link between our site and enabled sites. Test the config file using the -t switch and restart Nginx. Once live, use reload instead of restart to reduce downtime.

sudo ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/example.com /etc/nginx/sites-enabled
sudo nginx -t
sudo service nginx restart