configuring-nginx

# Configuring nginx

## Purpose

Guide engineers through configuring nginx for common web infrastructure needs: static file serving, reverse proxying backend applications, load balancing across multiple servers, SSL/TLS termination, caching, and performance optimization. Provides production-ready configurations with security best practices.

## When to Use This Skill

Use when working with:
- Setting up web server for static sites or single-page applications
- Configuring reverse proxy for Node.js, Python, Ruby, or Go applications
- Implementing load balancing across multiple backend servers
- Terminating SSL/TLS for HTTPS traffic
- Adding caching layer for performance improvement
- Building API gateway functionality
- Protecting against DDoS with rate limiting
- Proxying WebSocket connections

Trigger phrases: "configure nginx", "nginx reverse proxy", "nginx load balancer", "enable SSL in nginx", "nginx performance tuning", "nginx caching", "nginx rate limiting"

## Installation

**Ubuntu/Debian:**
```bash
sudo apt update && sudo apt install nginx -y
sudo systemctl enable nginx
sudo systemctl start nginx
```

**RHEL/CentOS/Rocky:**
```bash
sudo dnf install nginx -y
sudo systemctl enable nginx
sudo systemctl start nginx
```

**Docker:**
```bash
docker run -d -p 80:80 -v /path/to/config:/etc/nginx/conf.d nginx:alpine
```

## Quick Start Examples

### Static Website

Serve HTML/CSS/JS files from a directory:

```nginx
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;
    }

    location ~* \.(jpg|jpeg|png|gif|ico|css|js|woff2)$ {
        expires 1y;
        add_header Cache-Control "public, immutable";
    }
}
```

Enable site:
```bash
sudo ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/example.com /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/
sudo nginx -t && sudo systemctl reload nginx
```

See `references/static-sites.md` for SPA configurations and advanced patterns.

##