WordPress Nginx

This config kit contains the Nginx configurations used in the Install WordPress on Ubuntu 20.04 guide. It contains best practices from various sources, including the WordPress Codex and H5BP. The following example sites are included:

• multisite-subdirectory.com - WordPress multisite install using subdirectories
• multisite-subdomain.com - WordPress multisite install using subdomains
• single-site.com - WordPress single site install
• single-site-with-caching.com - WordPress single site install with FastCGI caching
• single-site-no-ssl.com - WordPress single site install (no SSL or page caching)

Usage

Site configuration

You can use these sample configurations as reference or directly by replacing your existing nginx directory. Follow the steps below to replace your existing Nginx configuration.

Backup any existing config:

sudo mv /etc/nginx /etc/nginx.backup

Copy these configs to /etc/nginx.

Symlink the default file from sites-available to sites-enabled, which will setup a catch-all server block. This will ensure unrecognised domains return a 444 response.

sudo ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/default /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/default

Copy one of the example configurations from sites-available to sites-available/yourdomain.com:

sudo cp /etc/nginx/sites-available/single-site.com /etc/nginx/sites-available/yourdomain.com

Edit the site accordingly, paying close attention to the server name and paths.

To enable the site, symlink the configuration into the sites-enabled directory:

sudo ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/yourdomain.com /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/yourdomain.com

Test the configuration:

sudo nginx -t

If the configuration passes, restart Nginx:

sudo service nginx reload

PHP configuration

The php-fpm pool configuration is located in global/php-pool.conf and defaults to PHP 7.4. It will need modifying if you want the default php-fpm pool service to be a different PHP version. Additional PHP version upstream definitions can be added to the /upstreams folder (a PHP 7.3 sample is provided there). You can either use the default pool using $upstream in your nginx configurations or the specific upstream definition (i.e. php73, php72) setup by your custom upstream definitions.

For example, currently the nginx configuration for single-site.com has the following set for php requests:

fastcgi_pass    $upstream

You could change that to the following to use the php 7.3 PHP service instead (assuming that php7.3-fpm service is running).

fastcgi_pass    php73

This effectively allows you to have different server blocks execute different versions of PHP if needed.

Directory Structure

This config kit has the following structure, which is based on the conventions used by a default Nginx install on Debian:

.
├── conf.d
├── global
    └── server
├── sites-available
├── sites-enabled

conf.d - configurations for additional modules.

global - configurations within the http block.

global/server - configurations within the server block. The defaults.conf file should be included on the majority of sites, which contains sensible defaults for caching, file exclusions and security. Additional .conf files can be included as needed on a per-site basis.

sites-available - configurations for individual sites (virtual hosts).

sites-enabled - symlinks to configurations within the sites-available directory. Only sites which have been symlinked are loaded.

Recommended Site Structure

The following site structure is used throughout these configs:

.
├── yourdomain1.com
    └── cache
    └── logs
    └── public
├── yourdomain2.com
    └── cache
    └── logs
    └── public