Nginx

2012-10-25T00:06:29Z

The Lord of Time: Updated the configuration notation on where configs reside for Ubuntu given prior knowledge of the NGINX packages (member of the nginx team on Launchpad)

[http://nginx.net/ nginx] is a lightweight web server that powers 11.53% of web servers across all domains[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nginx#Usage]. Unless you have specific requirements that demand a heavy web server like Apache, you are much better off using nginx.

Below are instructions on how to get Joomla! running with [http://wiki.nginx.org/PHPFcgiExample nginx and PHP via FastCGI].

== Install nginx ==
For Ubuntu, run <tt>aptitude install nginx</tt>. For other distros, run the corresponding package manager, or see http://wiki.nginx.org/Install.

== Install PHP FastCGI ==
For Ubuntu, read this excellent page on how to [http://wiki.nginx.org/PHPFcgiExample configure PHP and FastCGI for nginx].

For Gentoo, PHP will run as a FastCGI service (fpm), so the nginx server will run PHP asa different process:
<pre>
# echo "dev-lang/php gd gd2 curl simplexml tokenizer dom tidy sqlite xml fpm cgi" >> /etc/portage/package.use
# emerge php
</pre>
The default settings of php-fpm are good for most servers. For special configuration visit the [http://php.net/manual/en/install.fpm.php PHP FPM site].

== Configure Nginx ==
nginx configuration files reside in:
* <tt>/etc/nginx/sites-available/</tt> on Ubuntu (for sites running on that nginx instance)
* <tt>/etc/nginx/nginx.conf</tt> on Gentoo and Raspbian(= Debian optimized for Raspberry Pi)

Here is an sample nginx configuration file joomla.conf that you can reuse over all your nginx enabled-sites

<pre>
server {
listen 80;
server_name YOUR_DOMAIN;
server_name_in_redirect off;

access_log /var/log/nginx/localhost.access_log main;
error_log /var/log/nginx/localhost.error_log info;

root PATH_ON_SERVER;
index index.php index.html index.htm default.html default.htm;
# Support Clean (aka Search Engine Friendly) URLs
location / {
try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php?q=$uri&$args;
}

# deny running scripts inside writable directories
location ~* /(images|cache|media|logs|tmp)/.*\.(php|pl|py|jsp|asp|sh|cgi)$ {
return 403;
error_page 403 /403_error.html;
}

location ~ \.php$ {
fastcgi_pass 127.0.0.1:9000;
fastcgi_index index.php;
include fastcgi_params;
fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
include /etc/nginx/fastcgi.conf;
}

# caching of files
location ~* \.(ico|pdf|flv)$ {
expires 1y;
}

location ~* \.(js|css|png|jpg|jpeg|gif|swf|xml|txt)$ {
expires 14d;
}

}
</pre>

Pay attention for few things:
# The parameter <tt>fastcgi_pass</tt> is set to 127.0.0.1:9000, corresponding to the port that fpm is configured to listen to. This means you can run the PHP processes on separate servers. On Gentoo, you can find this configuration in <tt>/etc/php/fpm-php5.3/php-fpm.conf/</tt>
# Don't forget to replace YOUR_DOMAIN & PATH_ON_SERVER depend on your domain and the path of Joomla on your server.

== GZip support ==
If you need GZip compression support, add the following section to the http section of the main nginx configuration file:
<pre>
gzip on;
gzip_http_version 1.1;
gzip_comp_level 6;
gzip_min_length 1100;
gzip_buffers 4 8k;
gzip_types text/plain application/xhtml+xml text/css application/xml application/xml+rss text/javascript application/javascript application/x-javascr$
gzip_proxied any;
gzip_disable "MSIE [1-6]\.";
</pre>

== Sources ==
* [http://en.gentoo-wiki.com/wiki/Nginx Nginx in Gentoo]
* [http://www.kevinworthington.com/nginx-for-windows/ Nginx for Windows]
* [http://wiki.nginx.org/Install#Ubuntu_PPA Nginx in Ubuntu]
* [http://www.debianadmin.com/howto-install-nginx-webserver-in-debian.html Nginx in Debian]
* [http://php.net/manual/en/install.fpm.php PHP-FPM installation and configuration]
* [http://wiki.nginx.org/HttpGzipModule GZip in Nginx]
* [http://wiki.nginx.org/HttpRewriteModule Rewrite in Nginx]
* [http://nginx.org/en/docs/http/request_processing.html How nginx processes a request]

Joomla! Documentation - User contributions [en]

Nginx