Setting .conf files for Nginx

Question

I use Nginx as a server, and I currently use this for configuration of each my sites. Basically, I have multiple files like this located in /etc/nginx/conf.d/.

#example.conf
server {
 listen 80;
 server_name www.my-site.com my-site.com;
 root /var/www/html/my-site.com;
 location / {
 rewrite ^/category/(.*)$ /category.php?id=1ドル last;
 rewrite ^/profile/(.*)$ /profile.php?id=1ドル last;
 try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php?$query_string;
 }
 index index.html index.htm index.php;
 error_page 404 /404.html;
 location = /var/www/html/nginx/error/404.html {
 root /var/www/html/nginx/error/;
 }
 error_page 500 502 503 504 /50x.html;
 location = /var/www/html/nginx/error/50x.html {
 root /var/www/html/nginx/error/error/;
 }
 location ~ \.php$ {
 fastcgi_pass 127.0.0.1:9000;
 fastcgi_index index.php;
 fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
 include fastcgi_params;
 }
}

So, I have 6 sites with their own file like this, and since I am about to do a complete re-install of my server, I would like to know how I can improve this configuration, both security and optimization wise.

Answer 1

The config looks great. However, a few points:

1. If your server responds to both the www and non-www version of the site, just leave a wildcard. So server name should read:

   server_name *.my-site.com;
   

2. You shouldn't put your configs in /etc/nginx/conf.d. Instead, place them in /etc/nginx/sites-available and then symlink them (ln -s) to /etc/nginx/sites-enabled. So, your /etc/nginx directory should look like:

    /etc/nginx/
    nginx.conf
    sites-available/
    my-site.conf
    my-other-site.conf
    yet-another-site.conf
    sites-enabled/
    my-site.conf -> /etc/nginx/sites-available/my-site.conf
    my-other-site.conf -> /etc/nginx/sites-available/my-other-site.conf
    yet-another-site.conf -> /etc/nginx/sites-available/yet-another-site.conf
   

• robue-a7119895: Oh, thanks. Point #2 is a great advice. Hope to get more of the same, as for #1, that was intentional, since I need to for staging/developing ex. dev-stg.my-site.com which points to another folder, I had to be explicit. Thanks, add more if you don't mind :)
• jsanc623: Ah totally understood on point 1. As for point 2 - another great use of that method is that if you ever need to disable a site for whatever reason, you just delete the symlink and reload nginx. Your original config in sites-available will remain untouched if you ever need to reenable in the future (by creating the symlink again).