Separate config files per site in Nginx - Mini Project: Build & Apply

Separate Config Files Per Site in Nginx

📖 Scenario: You are managing a web server that hosts multiple websites. To keep things organized and easy to maintain, you want to create separate configuration files for each website instead of putting all settings in one big file.

🎯 Goal: Learn how to create individual Nginx configuration files for two different websites and enable them by including them in the main Nginx configuration.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create separate config files for two sites: site1.conf and site2.conf

Each config file must define a server block with the correct server_name and root directory

Add an include directive in the main Nginx config to load these site configs

Test the configuration by printing the included files

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

Web servers often host multiple websites. Keeping each site's configuration separate makes it easier to manage and update without affecting others.

💼 Career

System administrators and DevOps engineers use this technique daily to organize web server configurations and deploy multiple sites efficiently.

1

Create separate config files for two sites

Create two separate Nginx config files named site1.conf and site2.conf. In site1.conf, write a server block with server_name site1.example.com; and root /var/www/site1;. In site2.conf, write a server block with server_name site2.example.com; and root /var/www/site2;.

Nginx

# Your code here to create site1.conf and site2.conf with server blocks

Need a hint?

Each config file should have a server block with listen 80;, server_name, and root directives.

2

Add include directive in main Nginx config

In the main Nginx configuration file (e.g., nginx.conf), add an include directive to load all config files from the /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/ directory.

Nginx

server {
    listen 80;
    server_name site1.example.com;
    root /var/www/site1;
}

server {
    listen 80;
    server_name site2.example.com;
    root /var/www/site2;
}

# Add include directive below
# Your code here

Need a hint?

The include directive should point to the directory where your site config files are stored.

3

Simulate enabling site config files

Create symbolic links for site1.conf and site2.conf inside the /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/ directory to enable these sites.

Nginx

server {
    listen 80;
    server_name site1.example.com;
    root /var/www/site1;
}

server {
    listen 80;
    server_name site2.example.com;
    root /var/www/site2;
}

include /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/*;

# Your code here to create symbolic links

Need a hint?

Use the ln -s command to create symbolic links for each site config file.

4

Print included config files to verify

Print the list of files included by the include /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/*; directive by running ls /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/.

Nginx

server {
    listen 80;
    server_name site1.example.com;
    root /var/www/site1;
}

server {
    listen 80;
    server_name site2.example.com;
    root /var/www/site2;
}

include /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/*;

ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/site1.conf /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/site1.conf
ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/site2.conf /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/site2.conf

# Your code here to list files

Need a hint?

Use the ls command to list the files in the /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/ directory.