Create multiple Sites in Nginx

Install nginx if not already

# Update the package repository
sudo apt update
sudo apt install -y nginx
# Verify nginx is running by
sudo systemctl status nginx.service 
# if not running enabled and start
sudo systemctl enable nginx.service && sudo systemctl start nginx.service

Define the root of the sites

sudo mkdir /var/www/sitename.com
sudo mkdir /var/www/another-site.com

Add hello world HTML page inside sitename.com , another-site.com

For sitename.com

echo '<html>
<head>
    <title>Welcome to sitename.com!</title>
</head>
<body>
    <h1 style="color: green;">The sitename.com is working!</h1>
</body>
</html>'  | sudo tee /var/www/sitename.com/index.html

For another-site.com

echo '<html>
<head>
    <title>Welcome to another-site.com!</title>
</head>
<body>
    <h1 style="color: green;">The another-site.com is working!</h1>
</body>
</html>'  | sudo tee /var/www/another-site.com/index.html

Configuration of the sites

for sitename.com

echo '
server {
        listen 80;
        listen [::]:80;

        root /var/www/sitename.com;
        index index.html index.htm;

        server_name sitename.com www.sitename.com;

        location / {
                try_files $uri $uri/ =404;
        }
}
' | sudo tee /etc/nginx/sites-available/sitename.com

for another-site.com

echo '
server {
        listen 80;
        listen [::]:80;
        root /var/www/another-site.com;
        index index.html index.htm;

        server_name another-site.com www.another-site.com;

        location / {
                try_files $uri $uri/ =404;
        }
}
'  | sudo tee /etc/nginx/sites-available/another-site.com

Enable site configuration

#Create a symbolic link from sites-available to sites-enabled 
# for sitename.com
sudo ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/sitename.com /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/

# for another-site.com
sudo ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/another-site.com /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/

sudo systemctl restart nginx

Test from Local Machine

If you are testing this in your local lab environment or virtual box, etc., add an entry to the /etc/hosts file on your main laptop. Map the domain name (sitename.com, another-site.com) to the IP address of your Ubuntu server.

Note: If you have a real server and a domain name, you don't need the above steps. Simply add an A DNS record to your domain name provider, using the IP address of the server as the value.

Next we will look how to server PHP files

Beyond DevOps