Based in Downtown Brooklyn
nginx
nginx configuration, tuning, and troubleshooting
- We support it
- We run it for clients
- We use it ourselves
nginx is the web server behind a large share of fast sites and most reverse proxies. Configured well, you never think about it. Configured badly, you get 502s, slow responses and redirect rules that fight each other. We do the configuring.
The relationship
How we work with nginx
- Support
We support it
502 Bad Gateway, 504 timeouts, broken rewrites, mixed-content and SSL issues, and the upstream problems nginx is reporting on: we read the logs and fix the cause.
- Managed
We run it for clients
On managed servers we run nginx as the front door: virtual hosts, TLS, HTTP/2, caching, rate limiting and log monitoring, with the configuration in version control.
- In-house
We use it ourselves
Our own servers run nginx on AlmaLinux, so the configuration we hand you is the one we live with.
Sound familiar?
nginx problems we fix
You don’t need to know the technical name for it. Tell us what’s happening, and we’ll work out what needs attention.
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“502 Bad Gateway.”
nginx can’t reach the application behind it: usually PHP-FPM or a Node process that died or ran out of workers. We fix the upstream and size the pools properly.
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“504 Gateway Timeout on some pages.”
Slow upstream requests hitting nginx’s timeouts. We find the slow request first, and tune the timeouts only as a last resort.
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“Redirects or rewrites don’t do what we expect.”
Location-block precedence trips up almost everyone. We restructure the config so the rules read the way they behave.
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“SSL certificates keep expiring or won’t renew.”
Let’s Encrypt renewal hooks, certificate chains and reloads, set up so it stops being a thing that happens.
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“We’re moving from Apache and the .htaccess rules don’t carry over.”
We translate the rules into nginx configuration, test them, and cut over with no lost URLs.
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“The server falls over under traffic spikes.”
Worker settings, keepalive, FastCGI cache and static-file handling, tuned for the actual traffic.
Something else with nginx? Tell us about it.
Where it fits
The services behind the nginx work
cPanel & WHM
Cloudflare
PHP
Amazon Web Services
DigitalOcean
UbuntuQuestions we get
nginx, answered plainly
Do you support Apache too?
Yes. Many client servers run Apache, or both. Ask us either way.
Can you take over a server someone else configured?
That describes most of them. We start by reading the configuration and the logs, then document what’s there before changing anything.
Do you run nginx as part of managed hosting?
Yes. It’s the standard web server on our managed server plans.
Is nginx faster than Apache?
For static files and as a reverse proxy, usually. For a typical WordPress site, hosting and PHP tuning matter more than the choice of web server.
Start the conversation
Got a nginx headache?
Tell us what’s giving you trouble, or what you’d like to stop managing yourself. You don’t need a technical brief. A few sentences is a good place to start.
Thanks for reaching out.
We’ve received your message about nginx and will get in touch about next steps.