Hinky’s Proxy Obsession

If you do any kind of hacking around with Web sites, nginx (“Engine X”) is an awesome Web server.

I do most of my keyboard-banging through a residential ISP, so I’m not technically allowed to run any kind of Web server at my end of the pipe, but I do bang the keyboard from work as well (and I’m not technically allowed to do that, either, so don’t tell anyone).  I run a few Web sites from behind my residential IP address just for educational purposes (my own education).

I decided I needed to educate myself after reading that nginx had plowed it’s way to the #3 spot behind IIS and Apache back in December (it may have happened before that – I just happened to read about it in December).

So I downloaded it and compiled it.  After I set it up and got it working, I shut down Apache for good.

Adios, old friend.  Time has come to part.

What I like most about nginx is its utter simplicity.  They tell me it’s fast as well, but I have it installed on an 800 mHz PIII, so I wouldn’t know (however, it is “fast enough”).  The WordPress sites I’m running – educationally – are served up by nginx, with the MySQL backend on the same virtual machine that runs the proxy project.  At the present time, they are served to a limited set of IP addresses via SQUID reverse-proxy, but this is going to change as soon as I can set up an nginx reverse-proxy on that particular box.

If you’re looking for technical tips and HOWTOs, I’m too much of a beginner to go that deep right now (but I will say watch out for the quick setup guides you can find online – they leave out important stuff in the example configs).  My goal is simply to gush over nginx and tell you how wonderful it is.  It is extremely simple, and if you have an IQ over 85 it should be a snap to set it up.

If you don’t have an IQ over 85, stick with IIS.