Build Your Own Raspberry Pi NGINX Web Server

NGINX is a lightweight, open-source and robust web server that acts as an email proxy, reverse proxy and HTTP cache. It can balance the high load and has a fast response time allowing users to load the web page at a quick pace. The server is used by many high-profile platforms such as Google, IBM, Twitter, and Facebook. Although the NGINX server lags behind Apache in terms of performance, it’s easy to set up and utilizes fewer memory resources than Apache.

This article will guide you on installing and configuring NGINX Server on Raspberry Pi and building your own NGINX Web Server.

Build Your Own Raspberry Pi NGINX Web Server

Building an NGINX web server is not a complex process; you can do so easily by carefully following the below-mentioned steps.

Step 1: Remove Apache From Raspberry Pi

Before moving towards the main process of setting up the NGINX web server, you should need to remove the Apache web server from your Raspberry Pi in case it’s installed in your system. To remove Apache, the following command will be used:

$ sudo apt remove apache2 -y

Step 2: Install NGINX on Raspberry Pi

After successfully removing Apache from Raspberry Pi, you can install NGINX on Raspberry Pi using the following command:

$ sudo apt install nginx -y

Wait for a few seconds till NGINX installation completes and afterward you can move towards the next step.

Step 3: Start NGINX Service on Raspberry Pi

After the installation, you can start NGINX service through the following command:

$ sudo systemctl start nginx

Step 4: Check NGINX Service Status on Raspberry Pi

Ensure that the NGINX service is successfully running on your Raspberry Pi system and you can confirm it by applying the following command:

$ sudo systemctl status nginx

Step 5: Install PHP Dependencies on Raspberry Pi

NGINX server requires some PHP dependencies that you should install on your system using the following command:

$ sudo apt install php8.0-fpm php8.0-mbstring php8.0-mysql php8.0-curl php8.0-gd php8.0-curl php8.0-zip php8.0-xml -y

Step 6: Configure NGINX on Raspberry Pi

After successfully installing dependencies, you should need to do some configuration within the NGINX configuration file and you can open this file through the following command:

$ sudo nano /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/default

Inside the file, first find the following highlighted line:

Replace the above lines with the following line:

index index.php index.html index.htm;

Further, you should also uncomment the following highlighted lines inside the file.

Since you have installed php 8.0, you should replace php 7.4 with it.

Save the file using CTRL+X, add Y and then restart the NGINX service via following command:

$ sudo systemctl restart nginx

After the configuration, open the index.php file using the following command:

$ sudo nano /var/www/html/index.php

Then add the simple code for publishing the message on the web.

<?php

echo “Your Message”;

?>

Save this file and head to your browser and enter the IP address of your Raspberry Pi system that you can find through the “hostname -I” command.

The above output on the web shows that we have successfully configured and built our NGINX web server on Raspberry Pi.

Conclusion

NGINX is a lightweight web server that is easy to set up and can easily be installed on your Raspberry Pi through the “apt” installation command. Afterward, through some configuration, as mentioned in the guidelines above, you can successfully build your own NGINX web server using your device’s IP address.

Build Your Own Raspberry Pi NGINX Web Server