Installing NGINX on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS
Updated by Linode Written by Linode
What is NGINX?Permalink
NGINX is an open source web server with powerful load balancing, reverse proxy, and caching features. It was initially designed to solve scaling and concurrency problems with existing web servers. Its event-based, asynchronous architecture has made it one of the most popular and best-performing web servers available.
Before You BeginPermalink
Set up your Linode in the Getting Started and Securing your Server guides.
If you want a custom domain name for your site, you can set this up using our DNS Manager guide.
- Don’t forget to update your
/etc/hosts
file with the public IP and your site’s fully qualified domain name as explained in the Update Your System’s hosts File section of the Getting Started guide.
Note
This guide is written for a non-root user. Commands that require elevated privileges are prefixed with
sudo
. If you’re not familiar with thesudo
command, visit our Users and Groups guide.All configuration files should be edited with elevated privileges. Remember to include
sudo
before running your text editor.- Don’t forget to update your
Install NGINXPermalink
Currently, the best way to install NGINX on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS is to use the version included in Ubuntu’s repositories:
sudo apt update
sudo apt install nginx
Add a Basic SitePermalink
Create a new directory for your site. Replace
example.com
with your site’s domain name.sudo mkdir /var/www/example.com
You can add your site’s files in your
/var/www/example.com
directory. Create an index file with a simple “Hello World” example. Using the text editor of your choice, create a new file,/var/www/example.com/index.html
. Replaceexample.com
with your website’s domain name or your Linode’s public IP address.- /var/www/example.com/index.html
Configure NGINXPermalink
NGINX site-specific configuration files are kept in /etc/nginx/sites-available
and symlinked into /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/
. Generally you will want to create a separate original file in the sites-available
directory for each domain or subdomain you will be hosting, and then set up a symlink in the sites-enabled
directory.
Disable the default configuration file by removing the symlink in
/etc/nginx/sites-enabled/
:sudo unlink /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/default
Create a configuration file for your site in the text editor of your choice. Replace
example.com
in theserver_name
directive with your site’s domain name or IP address:- /etc/nginx/sites-available/example.com
Set up a new symlink to the
/etc/nginx/sites-enabled/
directory to enable your configuration:sudo ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/example.com /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/
Test NGINXPermalink
Test your configuration for errors:
sudo nginx -t
Reload the configuration:
sudo nginx -s reload
Navigate to your Linode’s domain name or IP address in a browser. You should see your simple page displayed.
Advanced ConfigurationPermalink
For more advanced configuration options, including security and performance optimizations and TLS setup, see our four-part series on NGINX:
- Part 1: Installation and Basic Setup
- Part 2: (Slightly More) Advanced Configurations
- Part 3: Enable TLS for HTTPS Connections
- Part 4: TLS Deployment Best Practices
More InformationPermalink
You may wish to consult the following resources for additional information on this topic. While these are provided in the hope that they will be useful, please note that we cannot vouch for the accuracy or timeliness of externally hosted materials.
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This guide is published under a CC BY-ND 4.0 license.