Downloading and Installing NGINX

NGINX (pronounced engine-x) has become the leader among web servers ever since it came out 20 years ago. Back in 2004, its main goal was to outperform Apache, and today, NGINX is outperforming every web server when it comes to high-traffic websites or security. Throughout this book, we will discover and learn how to use NGINX, step by step. We will cover many subjects to have a configuration tailored to everyone’s needs.

In this first chapter, we will proceed with the necessary steps toward establishing a functional setup of NGINX. This moment is crucial for the smooth functioning of your web server—there are some required libraries and tools for installing the web server, some parameters that you will have to decide upon when compiling the binaries, and there may also be some configuration changes to perform on your system.

By the end of this chapter, you will have installed NGINX either through a public repository or by compiling...