You should look at the following URL's in order to grasp a solid understanding of Nginx configuration files in order to fully unleash the power of Nginx. http://wiki.nginx.org/Pitfalls http://wiki.nginx.org/QuickStart http://wiki.nginx.org/Configuration Generally, you will want to move this file somewhere, and start with a clean file but keep this around for reference. Or just disable in sites-enabled. Please see /usr/share/doc/nginx-doc/examples/ for more detailed examples. Default server configuration server { listen 80 default_server; listen [::]:80 default_server; location /nginx_status { Turn on nginx stats stub_status on; I do not need logs for stats access_log off; } SSL configuration listen 443 ssl default_server; listen [::]:443 ssl default_server; Note: You should disable gzip for SSL traffic. See: https://bugs.debian.org/773332 Read up on ssl_ciphers to ensure a secure configuration. See: https://bugs.debian.org/765782 Self signed certs generated by the ssl-cert package Don't use them in a production server! include snippets/snakeoil.conf; root /usr/share/ngnix/www; Add index.php to the list if you are using PHP index index.html index.htm index.nginx-debian.html; server_name _; location / { First attempt to serve request as file, then as directory, then fall back to displaying a 404. try_files $uri $uri/ =404; } pass the PHP scripts to FastCGI server listening on 127.0.0.1:9000 location ~ .php$ { try_files $uri =404; fastcgi_split_path_info ^(.+.php)(/.+)$; fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php-fpm.sock; fastcgi_index index.php; include fastcgi_params; fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name; } deny access to .htaccess files, if Apache's document root concurs with nginx's one #location ~ /.ht { deny all; #} } Virtual Host configuration for example.com You can move that to a different file under sites-available/ and symlink that to sites-enabled/ to enable it. #server { listen 80; listen [::]:80; server_name example.com; root /var/www/example.com; index index.html; location / { try_files $uri $uri/ =404; server { Listen on port 81 listen 81; Server name being used (exact name, wildcards or regular expression) server_name {censored}; root /usr/share/phpmyadmin; Logging error_log /var/log/phpmyadmin.access_log; access_log /var/log/phpmyadmin.error_log; location / { index index.php; } Pass the PHP scripts to FastCGI server location ~ .php$ { fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php5-fpm.sock; fastcgi_split_path_info ^(.+.php)(/.*)$; include fastcgi_params; fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME /usr/share/phpmyadmin$fastcgi_script_name; fastcgi_param HTTPS off; } }