Comprehensive Nginx Configuration Guide: Basics, Optimization, and Deployment

In the introduction, the author, a senior architect, explains that front‑end developers often need to understand Nginx and that many existing articles lack a clear overall picture, so this guide reorganizes the concepts from basic to advanced.

Original nginx.conf – The article first shows a full 118‑line configuration file, then removes all comments to reveal a concise 22‑line version, making it easier to read.

#user  nobody;
worker_processes  1;

events {
    worker_connections  1024;
}

http {
    include       mime.types;
    default_type  application/octet-stream;
    sendfile        on;
    keepalive_timeout  65;
    server {
        listen       80;
        server_name  localhost;
        location / {
            root   html;
            index  index.html index.htm;
        }
        error_page   500 502 503 504  /50x.html;
        location = /50x.html {
            root   html;
        }
    }
}

The annotated version adds explanatory comments in Chinese, describing the purpose of each directive such as worker processes, event handling, MIME types, sendfile, keepalive, server blocks, and location blocks.

Overall structure – Nginx is divided into three logical parts: the global block (settings before events ), the events block (network connection handling), and the http block (most of the functional configuration, including virtual hosts and proxy settings).

Simple deployment – For a basic website, only two modifications are needed: set server_name and root to point to the site’s directory, allowing Nginx to serve index.html directly.

Optimization techniques include:

History‑mode 404 handling: location / { try_files $uri $uri/ /index.html; }

Reverse proxy example: location /police/ { proxy_pass http://192.168.1.182:8852/police/; ... }

Enabling gzip compression with gzip on; and related directives.

Maintenance page via a commented rewrite ^(.*)$ /maintainace.html break; .

Hosting multiple sites on one IP by defining separate server blocks with different listen ports.

Static‑dynamic separation using dedicated location blocks for images, static assets, and other file types.

Basic Nginx commands – Installation ( yum install nginx ), checking processes ( netstat -anput | grep nginx ), starting ( nginx ), reloading ( nginx -s reload ), stopping ( nginx -s stop or nginx -s quit ), and testing configuration ( nginx -t ).

The article concludes with reference links to other tutorials and a brief disclaimer about the source of the content.