How it works...

Here are a few of the key configuration items. Firstly, user nginx defines the user in which NGINX will run as. This is important to note if you have a server-side script which requires the ability to write files and a user will also require permission to read the files.

Secondly, worker_processes sets the number of worker processes that NGINX will start. While a default of 1 doesn't sound very high, the event-driven nature means that this certainly won't be a limitation initially. The optimal number of processes depends on many factors, but an easy starting reference is to go by the number of CPU cores your server has.

Next, worker_connections is the maximum amount of simultaneous connections that a worker process can open. In the default configuration, this is set to 1024 concurrent connections.

Lastly, the include /etc/nginx/conf.d/*.conf; line tells NGINX to load all of the .conf files as if they were all part of the main nginx.conf file. This allows you to separate the configuration for different sites.