Configuring NGINX for WordPress

Covering nearly 30 percent of all websites, WordPress is certainly the Content Management System (CMS) of choice by many. Although it came from a blogging background, WordPress is a very powerful CMS for all content types and powers some of the world's busiest websites.

By combining it with NGINX, you can deploy a highly scalable web platform.

Note

You can view the official WordPress documentation on NGINX at https://codex.wordpress.org/Nginx.

We'll also cover some of the more complex WordPress scenarios, including multisite configurations with subdomains and directories.

Let's get started.

Getting ready

To compile PHP code and run it via NGINX, the preferred method is via PHP-FPM, a high-speed FastCGI Process Manager. We'll also need to install PHP itself and, for the sake of simplicity, we'll stick with the OS-supplied version. Those seeking the highest possible performance should ensure they're running PHP 7 (released December 3, 2015), which can offer a 2-3 times...