If you want to improve the speed and performance of your WordPress website, then we suggest that you set up your WordPress website on the virtual private server. With the help of Nginx Web Server, your website will be highly optimized for speed and performance. In this article, we will provide information about this. Why to use Nginx server for WordPress.
Before we continue, let’s know what Nginx is and what are the advantages of using Nginx as your WordPress web server.
Setup Your WordPress website with Nginx in VPS with Webionly
What is Nginx?
NGINX (short for Network Gateway Interchange Layer) is an open source software that provides a wide range of web serving capabilities, including but not limited to HTTP server capabilities. It can also be used as a reverse proxy, load balancer, and media streaming server.
NGINX was originally developed to be a high-performance, low-latency web server. However, it has since been extended to include a range of other features, such as reverse proxy, caching, and load balancing. Additionally, it can be used as an email proxy server for IMAP (IMAP), POP3 (P3), and SMTP (SMTP).
The goal of the original NGINX project was to build the fastest web server on the planet, and that goal is still very much in play today. In benchmarks that measure web server performance, NGINX consistently outperforms Apache and other servers.
Over the years, websites have evolved from simple HTML pages into dynamic, multi-faceted content. As a result, NGINX has evolved along with them. Today, it supports all the features of today’s Web, including WebSockets, HTTP/2 and gRPC, as well as streaming multiple video formats (HDDS, HLS and RTMP, among others).
NGINX is best known for its speed as a web server, but its scalable underlying architecture is also great for many other web tasks beyond just serving content. It can handle a lot of traffic, so it’s often used as a load balancer and reverse proxy.
It’s also used to distribute traffic to slower downstream servers – whether it’s a legacy database server or a microservices server.
Most often, it’s used between clients and another web server. It’s used as an SSL / TLS terminator or a web accelerator. As an intermediary, it efficiently takes care of tasks that can slow down a web server, like negotiating SSL / TLS or compressing or caching content to boost performance.
Most dynamic sites, built on anything from a Node.js server to a PHP server, use NGINX for content cache and a reverse proxy. This helps reduce load on the application servers and makes the most efficient use of the hardware.
WordPress With Nginx Web Server
WordPress is by far the most widely used platform for creating and delivering websites and web applications around the world. About 25% of all websites are built on open-source WordPress software. This includes sites for ebay, mozilla, rackspace, techcrunch, CNN, mtv, the new york times, the wall street jp, etc.
The most popular WordPress site, WordPress.com, is itself powered by the WordPress open-source software. WordPress.com is powered by WordPress.NGINX. Many WordPress customers start with the WordPress.com site and then migrate to WordPress.hosted open-source software, and more and more sites are using NGINX as well.
The beauty of WordPress is that it is very easy to use, both for the end user and for the implementation process. However, as the usage increases, there are some issues with the architecture of the WordPress site. Several steps can be taken to resolve these issues, such as caching and combining the WordPress.fastcGI with WordPress.nginx.
The Benefits of Full-Page Caching with NGINX
In particular, caching with NGINX has proven to be very effective in improving the performance of WordPress websites. In a performance test with an average WordPress site, a typical WordPress site was able to handle only 10 requests per second for home page views.
As the traffic grew, the error rate of WordPress also increased significantly. As the traffic for the home page increased, the Apache web server became very quickly unresponsive. The resource usage of the hosting server also increased to the point where the Apache web server had to stop to avoid becoming unresponsive.
At the peak, 1336 connections were served by NGINX, with only 7 going to Apache. In the performance test, we found that WordPress was served well by NGINX for all of those connections, with only an occasional request to go to Apache to update the cache content.
Not only does it serve more traffic efficiently, but WordPress websites using reverse-proxy caching by NGINX also have much faster load times.
Why use Nginx server for WordPress
As mentioned above, the performance of Nginx Web server is much better than that of Apache Web server. If you are planning to set up your VPS in the cloud, and you want your WordPress website to perform well, then you will definitely want to use Nginx as your web server.
If you use Nginx as a web server, you will get the following benefits.
◾ High Performance - Nginx is well-known for its ability to handle large numbers of concurrent connections efficiently. It is also known for its ability to quickly serve static content, resulting in faster page loads and a better user experience. This can have a positive effect on search engine rankings as well.
◾ Scalability - Nginx’s architecture is designed with scalability in mind. It manages resources efficiently and can handle large increases in traffic. This makes Nginx an ideal choice for websites that have an increasing number of users. Nginx’s event-driven architecture allows it to manage many simultaneous connections with little to no performance impact.
◾Caching Capabilities - Nginx has built-in caching capabilities. By caching the static content, Nginx reduces the server load and speeds up the delivery of content. This is especially useful for WordPress sites where caching can make a big difference in terms of performance.
◾Security Features - Nginx is well-known for its strong security capabilities. It can easily deal with security threats and is frequently used as a back-end proxy, providing an extra layer of security for WordPress sites. Nginx’s configuration options enable you to implement best-in-class security measures.
◾ Resource Efficiency- Nginx is a lightweight web server, meaning it doesn’t consume a lot of system resources. It doesn’t require a lot of memory or CPU to run. This makes Nginx a great choice for those with limited resources, as it allows for more concurrent connections while using less memory than other web servers.
◾Easy to configure: Nginx’s configuration syntax is simple and straightforward. This makes it easy for administrators to set up and manage their web servers. Nginx offers flexibility while keeping things simple.
In conclusion, selecting Nginx as your WordPress web server can improve your site’s performance, scalability and security. Nginx’s connection handling, caching and security features are why it’s widely used to host dynamic and high-volume websites like WordPress sites.
