Nginx Server Configs

Nginx Server Configs is a collection of configuration snippets that can help
your server improve the web site's performance and security, while also
ensuring that resources are served with the correct content-type and are
accessible, if needed, even cross-domain.

Getting Started

Using the Nginx server configs repo directly has a few required steps to be able to work.

• Nginx Beginners Guide
• Nginx Request Processing

Check nginx.conf settings

The first thing to check is that the nginx.conf file contains appropriate values for
your specific install.

Most specific variables are:

• user
• error_log
• pid
• access_log

Nginx test and restart

• To verify Nginx config

  $ nginx -t 
  

• To verify Nginx config with a custom file

  $ nginx -t -c nginx.conf
  

• To reload Nginx and apply new config

  $ nginx reload 
  

Basic structure

This repository has the following structure:

./
├── conf.d/
│   ├── default.conf
│	  └── templates/
├── h5bp/
│   ├── basic.conf
│   ├── location/
│   └── .../
├── mime.types
└── nginx.conf

• conf.d/

  This directory should contain all of the server definitions.

  Except if they are dot prefixed or non .conf extension, all files in this
  folder are loaded automatically.

  • templates folder

    Files in this folder contain a server template for secure and non-secure hosts.
    They are intended to be copied in the conf.d folder with all example.com
    occurrences changed to the target host.

• h5bp/

  This directory contains config snippets (mixins) to be included as desired.

  There are two types of config files provided, individual config snippets and
  combined config files which provide convenient defaults.

  • basic.conf

    This file loads a small subset of the rules provided by this repository to add
    expires headers, allow cross domain fonts and protect system files from web
    access.
    The basic.conf file includes the rules which are recommended to always be
    defined.

  • location/

    Files in this folder contain one or more location directives. They are intended
    to be loaded in the server context (or, in a nested location block).

• mime.types

  The mime.types file is responsible for mapping file extensions to mime types.

• nginx.conf

  The main Nginx config file.

Usage

As a reference

To use as reference requires no special installation steps, download/checkout the
repository to a convenient location and adapt your existing Nginx configuration
incorporating the desired functionality from this repository.

Directly

To use directly, replace the Nginx config directory with this repository. for example:

nginx stop
cd /etc
mv nginx nginx-previous
git clone https://github.com/h5bp/server-configs-nginx.git nginx
# install-specific edits
nginx start

Manage sites

$ cd /etc/nginx/conf.d

• Creating a new site

  $ cp templates/example.com.conf .actual-hostname.conf
  $ sed -i 's/example.com/actual-hostname/g' .actual-hostname.conf
  

• Enabling a site

  $ mv .actual-hostname.conf actual-hostname.conf
  

• Disabling a site

  $ mv actual-hostname.conf .actual-hostname.conf
  

$ nginx reload

Support

• Nginx v1.8.0+

Contributing

Anyone is welcome to contribute,
however, if you decide to get involved, please take a moment to review
the guidelines:

• Bug reports
• Feature requests
• Pull requests

Acknowledgements

Nginx Server Configs is only possible thanks to all the awesome
contributors!

License

The code is available under the MIT license.