PHP is a thoroughly tested product to use with NGINX because it is the most popular web-based programming language. It powers sites, such as Facebook, Wikipedia, and every WordPress-based site, and its popularity hasn't faded as other languages have grown.

In this chapter, we'll go through examples of the more common PHP scenarios and how to implement them with NGINX. As WordPress is the most popular of the PHP systems, I've included some additional information to help with troubleshooting. Even if you're not using WordPress, some of this information may be helpful if you run into issues with other PHP frameworks.

Most of the recipes expect that you have a working understanding of PHP systems, so not all of the setup steps for the systems will be covered. This is to keep the book succinct and allow the focus to be on the NGINX components.

In order...

Covering nearly 30 percent of all websites, WordPress is certainly the Content Management System (CMS) of choice by many. Although it came from a blogging background, WordPress is a very powerful CMS for all content types and powers some of the world's busiest websites.

By combining it with NGINX, you can deploy a highly scalable web platform.

We'll also cover some of the more complex WordPress scenarios, including multisite configurations with subdomains and directories.

Let's get started.

To compile PHP code and run it via NGINX, the preferred method is via PHP-FPM...

WordPress multisites (also referred to as network sites) allow you to run multiple websites from the one codebase. This can reduce the management burden of having separate WordPress installations when you have similar sites. For example, if you have a sporting site with separate news and staff for different regions, you can use a multisite installation to accomplish this.

To convert a WordPress site into a multisite, you need to add the configuration variable into your config file wp-config.php:

define( 'WP_ALLOW_MULTISITE', true ); 

Under the Tools menu, you'll now see an extra menu called Network Setup. This will present you with two main options, Sub-domains...

With version 8 recently released and a community of over 1 million supporters, Drupal remains a popular choice when it comes to a highly flexible and functional CMS platform. Version 8 has over 200 new features compared to version 7, aimed at improving both the usability and manageability of the system. This cookbook will be using version 8.0.5.

This example assumes you already have a working instance of Drupal or are familiar with the installation process. You can also follow the installation guide available at https://www.drupal.org/documentation/install.

MediaWiki, most recognized by its use with Wikipedia, is the most popular open source wiki platform available. With features heavily focused on the ease of editing and sharing content, MediaWiki makes a great system to store information you want to continually edit:

This example assumes you already have a working instance of MediaWiki or are familiar with the installation process. For those unfamiliar with the process, it's available online at https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Installation_guide.

The basic...

With nearly 30 percent market share, Magento is the most popular e-commerce platform in the world. Due to a number of features and complexity, it's also a very resource-intensive system to use compared to a lightweight alternative. This means that NGINX is an ideal pairing to ensure you have the highest performance possible.

The latest major version of Magento is 2.0, which was nearly a complete rewrite compared to the previous versions. There's still quite a bit of complexity involved too, so make sure that you're ready to take on Magento if you've chosen it for your e-commerce platform:

This guide assumes you're familiar with the installation of Magento 2.0...

With the recent release of version 3.5, Joomla is still one of the most popular CMS platforms in the world. This latest release features full PHP 7 support, drag-and-drop images, and more:

This assumes you have a working Joomla installation and have located the files at /var/www/html/. If you need an installation guide, try the official documentation available at https://docs.joomla.org/J3.x:Installing_Joomla.

To use Joomla with NGINX, we need a simple NGINX configuration file. This is a very basic PHP-FPM configuration...