Apache has been the go to web server for years, and many students will be familiar with it, this video explain just how NGINX differs from Apache and the pros and cons of each, including:

• Performance
• Memory Usage
• Server-side language configuration
• URI handling

An overview of the lesson structure:

• Demo server
• File transfer clients
• Terminal and Editor

Learn the most basic way to install and start NGINX, using a package manager such as apt-get or yum.

How to configure and compile a customised NGINX install from source:

• Downloading source code
• Configuring custom source code compilation options
• Adding non-default modules

Learn to add a custom NGINX install as a systemd service, for easier process management.

An overview of why this course excludes Windows

Understand NGINX configuration terminology, like context and directive, in order to follow along and make use of the NGINX documentation.

Learn to configure the most basic static file server.

• Create a new server context (virtual host)
• Configure static file serving and mime types.

Learn to configure location blocks (contexts):

• Custom URI matching with various modifiers
• Modifier priorities

Use NGINX variables & conditionals:

• Built in variables
• User defined variables
• Conditional statements (if)

Understand the difference between redirects & rewrites and how rewritten URIs are re-evaluated.

Learn how the try_files directive works in detail.

Includes:

• Standard try_files implementation
• Rewrite-flow
• Using named locations

Fine tune error & access logs for better debugging and optimised performance.

Understand different types of directives and how inheritance applies to each:

• Standard Directive
• Action Directive
• Array Directive

Learn to install and configure a standalone server-side language processor (PHP-FPM)

• PHP-FPM installation
• NGINX to PHP-FPM socket communication configuration
• Permissions configuration

Configure NGINX worker processes and file limits to match server capabilities. 

An overview of key buffer & timeout directives:

• What buffering is
• Why a server buffers data
• How to optimise buffer and timeout configurations

Learn to safely rebuild NGINX with the current build configuration whilst adding new modules:

• Getting the current NGINX build configuration
• Building new modules into NGINX
• Enabling dynamic modules

Configure resource-specific Expires Headers to help improve client-side performance and reduce server load.

Learn how to enable and configure Gzipping of static resources, drastically reducing server to client transfer data.

Improve dynamic language responses by enabling server-side caching.

Includes:

• Configuring FastCGI caching
• Understanding cache entries and entry matching
• Adding cache status headers
• Creating cache exceptions

Add the HTTP2 module:

• Understanding HTTP2 vs HTTP1.1
• Compiling the module into NGINX
• Generating self-signed SSL certificates
• Enabling SSL
• Enabling and testing for HTTP2

Learn to implement a very basic server push using HTTP2.

Fine-tune the SSL configuration by adding:

• Optimised SSL protocols
• Optimised ciphers suites
• Enable Diffie Hellman Key Exchange
• Cache SSL session

Learn to configure NGINX rate limiting:

• Set limiting factor:
  • User IP
  • Request
  • Server name
• Manage limiting behaviour by adding burst allowances and nodelay

Secure specific parts of the server via username &  password authentication.
Learn to use apache-utils to generate a password file and configure NGINX to secure requests to specific URIs.

Some best practises for securing an NGINX server, including:

• Removing unused default modules
• Hiding server information
• Restricting site embedding

A supplementary lesson on using Lets Encrypt on NGINX to generate free SSL certificates.

This lesson covers:

• An overview of Lets Encrypt as a service.
• Certbot install and usage.
• Certificate renewal and automation.

An overview of some changes to the lessons' format and tools used to test reverse proxying and load balancing.

Learn to implement reverse proxying in NGINX as a feature in of itself rather than only to support a backend.

An introduction to understanding the basic concept of load balancing and a default round-robin implementation of NGINX as a load balancer.

Learn to customise an NGINX load balancer by means of ip hashing or connection-based load balancing.

See where to find the best Nginx resources, references and further learning. Also covers the standard Nginx documentation structure.

An outro consisting of:

• Expected course updates & additions

• Course Feedback & Suggestions

• Links to more Stackacademy.tv Courses

Learn to add a custom NGINX install as an init service, for easier process management.

NOTE: Lesson deprecated in favour of systemd services

Set up geo location data on the server. This video teaches how to:

• Install the Maxmind geoip libraries
• Configure Nginx to look up geo location data using the GeoIP module
• Retrieve geo data using the module variables.

NOTE: The referenced Geo Data is no longer free. This lesson has therefore been deprecated, but remains here for reference.

Looks at configuring the MP4 module for Nginx. This includes setting streaming limits and using pseudo streaming.

Old Lesson: Archived for Reference Only