Host a Website with Nginx

Overview

Nginx is one of the most widely used web servers in the world. In this project you will install it, publish your own page and configure a dedicated site — the same steps used to host real websites on a Linux server, and good preparation for putting Nginx in front of applications later.

Prerequisites

Step 1: Install Nginx

sudo apt update
sudo apt install -y nginx

nginx -v

Step 2: Start It and Check

On a standard Ubuntu server, Nginx starts automatically after installation and systemctl status nginx shows it running. If it is not running, start it:

sudo service nginx start
service nginx status

Request the default page with curl. On a cloud server you can also open its public IP address in a browser:

curl -sI http://localhost | head -n 3
curl -s http://localhost | grep -o "<title>.*</title>"

That default page lives in /var/www/html:

ls -l /var/www/html

Step 3: Publish Your Page

Create a folder for your site. Because /var/www belongs to root, writing there needs sudo:

sudo mkdir -p /var/www/portfolio
sudo nano /var/www/portfolio/index.html

Type or paste this page, then save with Ctrl+O and exit with Ctrl+X:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
  <meta charset="UTF-8">
  <title>Priya's Linux Server</title>
</head>
<body>
  <h1>Hello from my own Linux web server!</h1>
  <p>Served by Nginx.</p>
</body>
</html>

Then hand the files to www-data, the user Nginx runs as, and check:

sudo chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/portfolio
ls -l /var/www/portfolio

Step 4: Configure a Server Block

Nginx describes each site in a “server block”. On Ubuntu they live in /etc/nginx/sites-available, and a site is switched on by linking it into sites-enabled. Create this file with sudo nano /etc/nginx/sites-available/portfolio:

server {
    listen 8080;
    server_name _;

    root /var/www/portfolio;
    index index.html;

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

    access_log /var/log/nginx/portfolio.access.log;
    error_log  /var/log/nginx/portfolio.error.log;
}

sudo ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/portfolio /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/portfolio
ls -l /etc/nginx/sites-enabled

Step 5: Test, Reload and Verify

Always test the configuration before applying it — a broken config can take every site offline:

sudo nginx -t

Reloading applies the new configuration without dropping visitors’ connections:

sudo service nginx reload
curl -s http://localhost:8080

Request a page that does not exist, then read the site’s access log — every request is recorded with its status code:

curl -s -o /dev/null -w "%{http_code}\n" http://localhost:8080/missing.html
sudo tail -n 2 /var/log/nginx/portfolio.access.log

Step 6: Catching Mistakes

To see why testing matters, remove the semicolon from the index line and test again:

sudo nginx -t

nginx -t names the file and the line where it noticed the problem — line 8, where the next block starts, just after the line that is missing its semicolon. Nothing was reloaded, so the running site is unaffected. Put the semicolon back and test again:

sudo nginx -t

Extend This Project

Summary

You installed Nginx, published a site with correct ownership, configured a server block, and followed the professional routine of testing before reloading and checking logs afterwards. These are the same steps used to host websites on Linux servers everywhere.