Quick question re: NGINX configuration

@KevinM1:

I've installed my LEMP (Debian 8, NGINX, MariaDB, PHP 7) stack on my server, and am in the process of configuring everything. I'm a bit confused with NGINX because the default sites-available file has two server blocks, and I'm not sure which one to modify in order to get PHP working.

The first is:

server {
    listen 80 default_server;
    listen [::]:80 default_server;

    # SSL configuration
    #
    # listen 443 ssl default_server;
    # listen [::]:443 ssl default_server;
    #
    # Note: You should disable gzip for SSL traffic.
    # See: https://bugs.debian.org/773332
    #
    # Read up on ssl_ciphers to ensure a secure configuration.
    # See: https://bugs.debian.org/765782
    #
    # Self signed certs generated by the ssl-cert package
    # Don't use them in a production server!
    #
    # include snippets/snakeoil.conf;

    root /var/www/html;

    # Add index.php to the list if you are using PHP
    index index.html index.htm index.nginx-debian.html;

    server_name _;

    location / {
        # First attempt to serve request as file, then
        # as directory, then fall back to displaying a 404.
        try_files $uri $uri/ =404;
    }

    # pass the PHP scripts to FastCGI server listening on 127.0.0.1:9000
    #
    #location ~ \.php$ {
    #   include snippets/fastcgi-php.conf;
    #
    #   # With php7.0-cgi alone:
    #   fastcgi_pass 127.0.0.1:9000;
    #   # With php7.0-fpm:
    #   fastcgi_pass unix:/run/php/php7.0-fpm.sock;
    #}

    # deny access to .htaccess files, if Apache's document root
    # concurs with nginx's one
    #
    #location ~ /\.ht {
    #   deny all;
    #}
}

And the second, just below it is:

# Virtual Host configuration for example.com
#
# You can move that to a different file under sites-available/ and symlink that
# to sites-enabled/ to enable it.
#
#server {
#    listen 80;
#    listen [::]:80;
#
#    server_name example.com;
#
#    root /var/www/example.com;
#    index index.html;
#
#    location / {
#        try_files $uri $uri/ =404;
#    }
#}

Which block should I modify? I'm going to host multiple sites, so does that make a difference?

Hi KevinM1,

The first file is the configuration for default server, i.e. for any domain that you do not specifically set up it's own server {} block.

The second file (which is currently completely commented out, so wouldn't have any effect until you uncomment it) is a template you can use for each of your domains.

Simply copy it, uncomment and add your own domain. Replicate for each site.

If you are not going to specify a server block for each domain (i.e., you will only use the default server), put your PHP settings there.

Otherwise, put your PHP settings into each individual sever block. Alternatively, create one PHP settings file and just reference it through include in each server block.

Hope that helps :idea: