Nginx Server Configs

Nginx Server Configs is a collection of configuration snippets that can help your server improve the website'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 the new config

  nginx -s reload
  

Basic structure

This repository has the following structure:

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

• conf.d/

  This directory should contain all 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).

• custom.d/

  This directory should contain all the custom nginx.conf configuration.

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

• 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.

Download the latest release archive.

Directly

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

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

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 -s 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.