Nginx is an open-source server which is renowned for its rich features - high performance, high stability, flexibility, simplified configuration, low memory consumption and speed which makes it suitable for handling websites with high traffic.

Developed by Igor Sysoev in 2004, Nginx is popular among big Tech companies - Netflix, WordPress, Adobe, Google, etc.

The Nginx server can be patched while in use. You don't need to shut down your web service to carry out an upgrade or patching with Nginx. Nginx is highly scalable, it can serve a host of incoming requests though there could be a downside to this. Nginx supports the distribution of web traffic to two or many servers in the form of load balancing.

Nginx acts as a reverse proxy, seating in front of the web server, Forwarding client requests made through the browser to the web server.

Website Hosting with Nginx

• Nginx installation on Debian-based Linux Systems

$ sudo apt update

$ Sudo apt install Nginx

• Check installation

$ nginx --version

• To test the web server, get nginx started

$ service nginx start

Fetch private IP address using

$ ifconfig

Or use the conventional loopback address 127.0.0.1 . Head over to the browser and paste the IP address or the loopback address. It would serve you the nginx homepage.

To match the website address to an IP such that the domain name would be easier to use instead of the IP. Note: all locally hosted websites in your computer would render websites with your single private IP or loopback address. How to uniquely identify each website is done through the local DNS mapping in your local computer. Navigate into $ /etc/hosts