How to deploy server using Nginx

Terminologies -

1. Project name - Blogify
2. Domain name - harrsh.com

To host the website or server using Nginx, we would have to follow the following steps:

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1. Create server

For this blog, we will create the server using AWS.
We can create an ec2 t2.small instance with Ubuntu OS.

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2. Install Nginx

Update the fresh Ubuntu server.

sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade

Install Nginx

sudo apt install nginx

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3. Clone repositories

We will create a folder named server and will clone a GitHub repository of a simple Express server.

mkdir server
git clone https://github.com/rwieruch/node-express-server

We will also clone the ReactJS website for this blog.

mkdir client
git clone https://github.com/rwieruch/node-express-server

For hosting the static websites we place it in the project folder of Nginx.
Go to the folder www.

sudo cp -r client /var/www/html/blogify

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4. Configure Nginx

We will create a new Nginx configuration file in Nginx's sites-available folder. We usually create the file with the name of the Domain name to be used for that file.

cd /etc/nginx/sites-available
sudo nano harrsh.com

We will write the following code block to configure Nginx with our API and website

// API server block
server {
    server_name api.harrsh.dimboo.io;

    location / {
        proxy_pass http://localhost:8000;
        proxy_http_version 1.1;
        proxy_set_header Upgrade $http_upgrade;
        proxy_set_header Connection 'upgrade';
        proxy_set_header Host $host;
        proxy_cache_bypass $http_upgrade;
    }
}

// API server block
server {
    listen 80;
    server_name api.harrsh.com;
}

// Website server block
server {
    server_name harrsh.com;
    location / {
        root /var/www/html/blogify/dist;
        try_files $uri $uri/ /index.html;
    }
}

// Website server block
server {
    listen 80;
    server_name harrsh.com;
}

We will now mirror sites-available to sites-enabled

sudo ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/harrsh.com /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/

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5. Start API server

To automatically restart the server we will use pm2 package.

npm i pm2 -g
pm2 start npm --name "blogify-server" -- start
pm2 startup

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6. Configure DNS records

To point the domains to our server, you need to add the A record in our DNS records to redirect to our server.

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7. Install SSL certificates

To get the SSL certificates of our API and Website, we will use the service of Certbot.

sudo snap install --classic certbot
sudo ln -s /snap/bin/certbot /usr/bin/certbot
sudo certbot --nginx

To renew the certificates automatically

sudo certbot renew --dry-run