CentOS 7

How to Set Up Nginx Server Blocks on CentOS 7

To set up multiple websites on a single Nginx server running on CentOS 7, follow these steps:

Step 1 : Ensure that Nginx is installed on your CentOS 7 system. You can check this by running:

nginx -v

Step 2 : Create a directory for your website example.com and an index file to serve as the homepage:

sudo mkdir -p /var/www/example.com/html
sudo nano /var/www/example.com/html/index.html

Add the following HTML content to the index.html file:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
    <title>Welcome to example.com!</title>
</head>
<body>
    <h1>Success! The example.com server block is working!</h1>
</body>
</html>

Step 2 : Set the correct permissions for the web directory to ensure Nginx can access the files:

sudo chown -R nginx:nginx /var/www/example.com/html
sudo chmod -R 755 /var/www/example.com

Step 3 : Create a new server block configuration file for example.com:

sudo nano /etc/nginx/conf.d/example.com.conf

Add the following configuration to the file:

server {
    listen 80;
    server_name example.com www.example.com;

    root /var/www/example.com/html;
    index index.html;

    location / {
        try_files $uri $uri/ =404;
    }
}

Step 4 : If SELinux is enabled on your system, run the following command to ensure Nginx can access the files:

sudo semanage fcontext -a -t httpd_sys_rw_content_t "/var/www/example.com(/.*)?"
sudo restorecon -Rv /var/www/example.com/

Step 5 : Test the Nginx configuration to make sure there are no syntax errors:

sudo nginx -t

Step 6 : Restart the Nginx service to apply the changes:

sudo systemctl restart nginx

Step 7 : Ensure that your firewall allows HTTP traffic:

sudo firewall-cmd --permanent --add-service=http
sudo firewall-cmd --permanent --add-service=https
sudo firewall-cmd --reload

Step 8 : Test Your Configuration

Visit http://example.com in your browser. You should see your welcome message.

Congratulations! You have successfully set up an Nginx server block on CentOS 7. Repeat these steps for additional websites.