Nginx overview

Nginx (pronounced engine-x) is a free, open-source, high-performance HTTP server and reverse proxy, as well as an IMAP/POP3 proxy server. It's known for its high performance, stability, rich feature set, simple configuration, and low resource consumption.

As of September 2015, Nginx hosts nearly 12.18% (22.2M) of active sites across all domains. It powers several high-visibility sites, such as Netflix, Hulu, Pinterest, Cloudflare, Airbnb, WordPress.com, GitHub, SoundCloud, Zynga, Eventbrite, Zappos, Media Temple, Heroku, RightScale, Engine Yard, and MaxCDN

View the following article for further details:

• https://www.nginx.com/resources/wiki/

Nginx is available on DreamHost Private Servers as an optional web server to run your sites.

All DreamHost private servers use Apache by default instead of Nginx. This is because Apache supports a larger toolbox of things it can do immediately and is probably the most compatible across all web software out there today.

However, Nginx is a very good choice in cases where you have a site that gets large volumes of traffic and is running into performance/memory issues on a VPS. A server running Nginx serves your site faster while using less memory than Apache. This lets you handle a much larger amount of traffic more gracefully than Apache would. For a more detailed look at this, visit the Web Server Performance Comparison page:

• Web Server Performance Comparison

By default, gzip compression is enabled on your Nginx server. Follow these steps to disable gzip compression:

1. View the Local configuration files article to create your local /nginx/example.com directory.
2. Create a file named settings.conf in this /nginx/example.com directory.
3. Add the following content:

   gzip off;
   

4. Make sure to reload Nginx for the changes to take effect.

There are additional gzip compression options you can set that are all detailed at the following link:

• HttpGzipModule

Many web applications such as WordPress and MediaWiki are originally configured to work with Apache. Since .htaccess files are not supported with Nginx, there are some adjustments you must make in order to get your applications running properly.