Install nginx

$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get upgrade
$ sudo apt-get install nginx

Start nginx service

$ sudo service nginx start

Make sure nginx will start after server reboot

$ sudo update-rc.d nginx defaults

# should see sth like:
# System start/stop links for /etc/init.d/nginx already exist.

Configuration for virtual servers

Let's say there's an user called www-data for the websites directories, and nginx's default root directory is under /usr/share/nginx/www…

These pre-conditions will be used in these steps below:

Create directory for your site

$ sudo mkdir -p /usr/share/nginx/www/your-site.com/pubic_html

This will create a directory for your-site.com domain and we will put all website files under it.

Change owner and permissions

$ sudo chown -R www-data:www-data /usr/share/nginx/www/your-site.com/pubic_html
$ sudo chmod 755 /usr/share/nginx/www

Create a simple index.html

In order to test our virtual host, we can create a simple index.html to see if it's works.

You can use any editor to do this, as long as you make sure index.html is placed under:/usr/share/nginx/www/your-site.com/pubic_html/index.html

Create the new virtual host configuration file

Nginx has provide a example configuration file, we can copy this:

$ cp /etc/nginx/sites-available/default /etc/nginx/sites-available/your-site.com

or, you can create a blank file and fill these content below in it:

your-site.com

server {
	listen		80; ## listen for ipv4; this line is default and implied
	#listen		[::]:80 default_server ipv6only=on; ## listen for ipv6

	root /usr/share/nginx/www/your-site.com;

	index index.html index.htm;

	server_name your-site.com;
}

Save and Exit.

Make a symbolic link

$ sudo ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/your-site.com /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/your-site.com

…and make sure to delete the default configuration file:

$ sudo rm /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/default

…after all, restart the nginx server:

$ sudo service nginx restart