Nginx HTTP Server Second Edition

Harness the power of Nginx to make the most of your infrastructure and serve pages faster than ever

About This Book

• Discover possible interactions between Nginx and Apache to get the best of both worlds
• Learn to exploit the features offered by NGinx for your web applications
• Get the newest techniques available, designed with the latest version in mind

Who This Book Is For

By covering both the early setup stages and advanced topics, this book suits web administrators who interested in solutions to optimize their infrastructure, whether you are looking into replacing your existing web server software or integrating a new tool to cooperate with applications that are already up and running. If you, your visitors, and your operating system have been disappointed by Apache, this book is exactly what you need.

What You Will Learn

• Get to know the basics of the Nginx configuration: syntax, structure, and semantics
• Understand the advanced load balancing functionality of Nginx and the newest innovative IO mechanisms
• Create virtual host configurations effortlessly
• Discover all the first-party modules: how to enable, configure, and use them
• Establish advanced rewrite rules with the Nginx Rewrite module
• Set up Nginx to work with PHP, Python, and more via FastCGI
• Configure Nginx to work as frontend for your existing HTTP server
• Manipulate configuration files with ease and adapt them to various situations
• Discover the common pitfalls and find out how to avoid them

In Detail

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.

This book is 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, this complete directive reference will be your best friend at all stages of the configuration and maintenance processes.

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 so it does exactly what you need quickly and securely. For more experienced administrators, this book provides different approaches 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.

Style and approach

This tutorial-style book includes detailed instructions on each of the processes it describes, as well as step-by-step tutorials, commented configuration sections, and in-depth module descriptions, so you can make the most of the performance potential offered by Nginx.

Clément Nedelcu

Clément Nedelcu was born in France and studied in UK, French, and Chinese universities. After teaching computer science and programming in several eastern Chinese universities, he worked as a Technology Consultant in France, specializing in web and Microsoft .NET programming as well as Linux server administration. Since 2005, he has also been administering a major network of websites in his spare time. This eventually led him to discover Nginx: it made such a difference that he started his own blog about it. One thing leading to another...