In this article, we will explore how to install Nginx on an Ubuntu server and configure it to serve a simple HTML document.
You can install Nginx on your Ubuntu server by following the steps below.
1. Update packages:
sudo apt update -y
2. Install Nginx:
sudo apt install -y nginx
3. Create a folder to store our document:
We need a folder to install our application files or web documents.
mkdir /home/mydomain.com
4. Create a sample HTML file:
We also need to create a sample document to ensure that our server configuration is working properly.
vi /home/mydomain.com/index.html
Copy and paste the text below into the document.
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0">
<title>Welcome to Nginx!</title>
<style>
body { font-family: Arial, sans-serif; margin: 0; padding: 0; background: #f4f4f4; }
header { background: #009639; color: #fff; padding: 20px; text-align: center; }
main { max-width: 800px; margin: 50px auto; padding: 20px; background: #fff; border-radius: 8px; }
</style>
</head>
<body>
<header>
<h1>Welcome to Your Nginx Server</h1>
</header>
<main>
<h2>Setup Complete!</h2>
<p>Your Nginx server is now running successfully. Customize this page to fit your needs!</p>
</main>
</body>
</html>
5. Set up a server block:
We need to set up a server block (similar to virtual hosts in Apache) to serve a web page.
Go to /etc/nginx/sites-available directory and edit the default file.
server {
listen 80 default_server; #If it is a secondary server, make sure "default_server" is removed
listen [::]:80 default_server; #If it is a secondary server, make sure this line is removed
server_name mydomain.com;
location / {
root /home/mydomain.com;
index index.html index.htm;
}
}
6. Restart Nginx:
systemctl restart nginx
Conclusion:
You can test your Nginx configuration by navigating to http://your-ip or http://your-domain on your browser, where you should see your sample HTML document:
When you update your Nginx configuration, you can check the error logs with the following command:
nginx -t