Nginx is an incredibly fast and efficient web server and reverse proxy system. It’s a step away from traditional web servers that attempt to directly incorporate support for many types of scripting languages. In fact, Nginx only serves up only static data - but it does it in a hurry. I know, I know - who only has static content? You might be surprised how much of it you do have.
Nginx has a concise and powerful syntax for determining how to handle a request. It first checks to see if a static file exists, and if one does not exist, it then acts as a reverse proxy and sends your request to another service. For instance, for a php script, nginx will determine that it is a dynamic request, and it will then kick the request off to a fastcgi server. For a ruby on rails application, it will send the request to a mongrel cluster.
Subscribe
