Article -> Article Details

Installing a reliable web server is one of the first steps when setting up a new server for web hosting, development, or application deployment. One of the most popular and high-performance web servers used today is Nginx, known for its stability, rich feature set, simple configuration, and low resource consumption. If you're working with the latest version of Ubuntu, you may be wondering how to install Nginx web server on Ubuntu 24.04. Fortunately, Ubuntu makes it easy to install and configure Nginx using the APT package manager. In this comprehensive guide, we’ll walk through everything you need to know to install Nginx web server on Ubuntu 24.04, ensuring your server is ready to host your websites or applications.

To install Nginx on Ubuntu, you first need to ensure your system is updated. Begin by logging into your server and updating your package list using the command: sudo apt update. This refreshes the list of available packages and ensures you are installing the latest version of Nginx. After the update, it’s also a good practice to run sudo apt upgrade to make sure all packages on your system are current and secure. Once your system is updated, the next step to install Nginx web server is to use the APT package manager. Simply enter the command sudo apt install nginx, and Ubuntu will fetch and install the Nginx package along with any required dependencies.

After installation, you’ll want to verify that Nginx has been installed correctly. You can check the status of the Nginx service using the command systemctl status nginx. If everything is working properly, you should see that the service is active and running. At this point, Nginx is installed and running, and your server is already serving a default landing page. You can confirm this by opening a web browser and navigating to your server's IP address. If configured correctly, you’ll see the default Nginx welcome page, which means the installation was successful.

One of the strengths of Nginx lies in its flexibility and ease of configuration. Once you install Nginx on Ubuntu, you can start customizing its settings to suit your application or website. Nginx’s configuration files are located in the /etc/nginx directory. The main configuration file is /etc/nginx/nginx.conf, and individual site configurations are found in /etc/nginx/sites-available/. To host a website or web app, you’ll typically create a new configuration file in this directory and link it to /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/ using the ln -s command. This modular configuration makes it easier to manage multiple sites on the same server.

Another important step after you install Nginx web server is to allow HTTP and HTTPS traffic through the firewall. Ubuntu uses UFW (Uncomplicated Firewall) for managing firewall rules. If UFW is enabled on your system, run the command sudo ufw allow 'Nginx Full' to allow both HTTP (port 80) and HTTPS (port 443) traffic. You can confirm that the rules were added by typing sudo ufw status. This ensures that your web server can be accessed publicly on the internet.

In addition to static file hosting, Nginx is also widely used as a reverse proxy, load balancer, and HTTP cache. After you install Nginx on Ubuntu 24.04, you can configure it to sit in front of your application servers, such as those running Node.js, Python Flask, or PHP, and handle client requests efficiently. Nginx can also serve SSL/TLS certificates, compress responses, and cache content to improve performance. If you plan to secure your site with HTTPS, you can obtain a free SSL certificate from Let’s Encrypt and use the certbot tool to install it with Nginx.

When you install Nginx web server on Ubuntu 24.04, it's also worth learning a few important commands to manage the service. For example, you can start Nginx with sudo systemctl start nginx, stop it with sudo systemctl stop nginx, restart it with sudo systemctl restart nginx, and reload its configuration with sudo systemctl reload nginx without dropping connections. These commands give you control over the web server and allow you to apply configuration changes without a full reboot.

In conclusion, whether you're deploying a personal blog, a company website, or a high-traffic web application, learning how to install Nginx web server on Ubuntu 24.04 is an essential skill for system administrators and developers. With just a few commands, you can quickly install Nginx, configure it to serve content, manage firewall access, and even secure it with SSL. Ubuntu 24.04 provides a stable and secure platform, and Nginx complements it perfectly with its performance and flexibility. By following the steps outlined above, you can have a fully functioning Nginx server up and running in no time.