Overview

Nginx is a high-performance web server and reverse proxy, well suited to high-traffic sites and as a front end for PHP-FPM, Node.js or other application servers. This article shows how to install Nginx, serve a static site and configure a PHP-enabled server block on an ALYPOD CPU Pod.

Before you begin

• A CPU Pod with root/sudo access.
• Ports 80 and 443 allowed in the ALYPOD firewall.
• Optional: PHP-FPM for dynamic content.

Steps

Install

```bash

Debian / Ubuntu

sudo apt update && sudo apt install -y nginx

RHEL / AlmaLinux / Rocky

sudo dnf install -y nginx ```

Start and enable

bash sudo systemctl enable --now nginx sudo systemctl status nginx

Serve a static site

1. Create the web root:

bash sudo mkdir -p /var/www/example.com/html echo "<h1>Hello from ALYPOD</h1>" | sudo tee /var/www/example.com/html/index.html sudo chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/example.com

1. Create /etc/nginx/conf.d/example.com.conf (or sites-available on Debian):

```nginx server { listen 80; server_name example.com www.example.com; root /var/www/example.com/html; index index.html index.php;

location / {
    try_files $uri $uri/ =404;
}

location ~ \.php$ {
    include snippets/fastcgi-php.conf;
    fastcgi_pass unix:/run/php/php8.2-fpm.sock;
}

} ```

1. Test the configuration and reload:

bash sudo nginx -t sudo systemctl reload nginx

Reverse proxy example

To front an app listening on 127.0.0.1:3000:

nginx location / { proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:3000; proxy_set_header Host $host; proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr; proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Proto $scheme; }

Troubleshooting

• Problem: 502 Bad Gateway. Solution: The upstream (PHP-FPM or app) is down or the socket path is wrong — check systemctl status php*-fpm.
• Problem: Nginx will not start after an edit. Solution: Run nginx -t to see the exact syntax error and line number.
• Problem: PHP downloads instead of executing. Solution: Ensure the .php location block passes to FPM; the fastcgi_pass socket must exist.

Related articles

• [Installing the Apache web server]
• [Installing PHP and common extensions]
• [Setting up a free Let's Encrypt SSL certificate]