Adding PHP to NGINX server

PHP is one of the highest used programming languages for websites, and it allows you to add practically any functionality you'd ever want to your sites.

Install

sudo apt install php-fpm php-mysql

Um, I forgor

sudo nano /etc/php//fpm/php.ini

Comment the cgi.fix_pathinfo line, to look like below

#set cgi.fix_pathinfo = 0

Add to Website's NGINX conf

For each website you want to use php, you'll need to edit the confige file

sudo vim /etc/nginx/sites-available/

The following code needs adding within the XXX block

location ~ \.php$ {
	include snippets/fastcgi-php.conf;
	fastcgi_pass unix:/run/php/php-fpm.sock;
}

This will use nginx's fastcgi-php.conf snippet which is more secure by deafult than many other php/nginx configs because it 404s if the files doesn't exist. Read Neal Poole'sDon't trust the tutorials for more info.

Reload NGINX

sudo systemctl reload nginx

Test it works

Create a PHP file e.g. filename.php in the website's directory, and add the snippet below into it

Go to that webpage in your browser e.g. domain.co.uk/filename.php, and if php is working you should see a dump of your PHP's version, headers, etc.

Make nginx use index.php as homepage/root

Now we'll set nginx to load up index.php as the root of the website, if it exists. Open the site's config with an editor

vim /etc/nginx/sites-available/

Change the index line to rad as below. This will then tell the server to load index.php, and if it doesn't exists, load index.html in it's stead

index index.php index.html