We have LEMP Stack installed in our server, but in order to make our server really work we still need to do some tweaks. The first thing that we need to do is to configure Nginx because currently it serves only static content. If we enter our Server's Ip Address in our browser we'll get this page.
So here we need to tell Nginx to use PHP processor so that it can handle dynamic content. In order to do that we need to define new Nginx Server Block configuration file inside /etc/nginx/sites-available directory.
In my case I'll create new server block configuration called laraveldemo.site which is domain name that I have. But fill free to choose any name you like.
sudo nano /etc/nginx/sites-available/laraveldemo.site
Inside new server block configuration you can add following content.
# /etc/nginx/sites-available/laraveldemo.site
server {
listen 80;
listen [::]:80;
root /var/www/html/laraveldemo.site/public;
index index.php index.html index.htm index.nginx-debian.html;
server_name 128.199.161.82;
}Here's what each of these directives do:
listen Defines port number that Nginx will listen to. In this case, it will listen on port 80 which is the default port for HTTP.
root Defines the document root of our website.
index Defines files that will be used as an index. Files are checked in the specific order, for example if index.php file available Nginx will use it as index file, but if it was not found Ngix will find index.html and so forth.
server_name Defines the name of virtual server. We can point our server's domain name or public IP address to this directive.
Still in the same server block configuration we can add some location blocks like this:
server {
...
server_name 128.199.161.82;
location / {
try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php?$query_string;
}
location ~ \.php$ {
include snippets/fastcgi-php.conf;
fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $realpath_root$fastcgi_script_name;
fastcgi_param DOCUMENT_ROOT $realpath_root;
fastcgi_pass unix:/run/php/php7.2-fpm.sock;
}
location ~ /\.ht {
deny all;
}
}
Location blocks are sets configuration depending on a request URI. Here is what each location blocks do:
location / The first location block will be match with request that contains single segment such as /index.html, /foo or /bar. Because it includes a try_files directive, Nginx will checks the existence of files matching a URI request in the specified order and uses the first found file for request processing. If Nginx cannot find the appropriate file, it will return a 404 error.
location ~ \.php$ This second location block deals with .php file by pointing Nginx to the fastcgi-php.conf configuration file and the php7.2-fpm.sock file, which declares what socket is associated with php-fpm.
location ~ /\.ht The last location block basically tells Nginx to deny any .htaccess files which associated with Apache virtual host.
After adding this content we can hit Ctrl+x. This will show a message confirming the change. Hit Y and press Enter to continue.
Save modified buffer (ANSWERING "No" WILL DESTROY CHANGES) ? Y Yes N No ^C Cancel
Now if look inside the /etc/nginx/sites-available directory, we'll find two server block configuration files listed, the default configuration and our newly created one.
To enable our new server block we need to create a symbolic link inside the /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/ directory. We can do that by execute this command:
sudo ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/laraveldemo.site /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/
Now we have our own server block enabled. To ensure that Nginx using our new server block, we can unlink the default configuration file by executing this command:
sudo unlink /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/default
We can also test our new configuration file for syntax errors by typing:
sudo nginx -t
If you found any errors, go ahead and recheck your configuration file. But if everything is good you would have these messages show up:
nginx: the configuration file /etc/nginx/nginx.conf syntax is ok nginx: configuration file /etc/nginx/nginx.conf test is successful
Last, we need to restart Nginx service in order to make the necessary changes:
sudo systemctl restart nginx
Now if we head over to our browser then reload the page, we'll find 404 Not Found error displayed. Don't worry we'll fix this shortly.
The 404 Error happened because in our server block configuration we pointed the Document root of our web to /var/www/html/laraveldemo.site/public. But this directory is currently does not exist.
So now let's head over to our Terminal. And create that directory by typing this command.
sudo mkdir -p /var/www/html/laraveldemo.site/public
Then, inside this directory let's create a PHP file to test our new server block configuration.
sudo nano laraveldemo.site/public/index.php
Inside this file we can add this command.
<?php phpinfo() ?>
Basically those syntax will display all about PHP information on your server. To save the change in nano editor you can hit Ctrl+x. Hit Y to confirm and hit Enter.
Next, because by default the /var/www/html directory owned by user/group www-data which associated with Web server such as Apache or Nginx, we need to change the ownership of this directory to become laravel:www-data. We can do that by executing this command:
sudo chown -R laravel:www-data /var/www/html
We also need to modify the file mode by running this command:
sudo chmod g+s /var/www/html
Basically this command will makes subsequent file or directory creation inherit group id from the parent directory. Now if we switch back over to our browser and reload the page. We'll see this information in our screen.
This means our configuration is working good. Now we can remove our test file by executing this command:
sudo rm -rf /var/www/html/laraveldemo.site/public
This command will force removing the public directory as well as index.php file inside it. And now there's only laraveldemo.site directory left inside /var/www/html. Letter we'll pull our Laravel app from Github and place it inside this directory.