Virtual Servers Multiple Sites

In this guide, you’ll learn how to host multiple websites on a single Nginx server using virtual servers (also known as server blocks or virtual hosts). Imagine your server as a building and each site as an apartment. Visitors arrive at the building address (your server IP/port) and Nginx routes them to the correct apartment (server block) based on the domain name in the Host header.

By consolidating sites on one machine, you reduce infrastructure costs and simplify management—just one SSH session to maintain all your domains.

How Nginx Virtual Servers Work

When a request arrives, Nginx inspects the Host header (e.g., example.com, mail.example.com) and matches it against configured server blocks:

Nginx listens on a port (80 or 443 by default).
It checks the Host header.
It routes the request to the server block with the matching server_name.

Whether you’re serving a blog, mail client, or map application, each domain or subdomain points to its own configuration within the same Nginx instance.

Learn more in the Nginx server block documentation.

Configuring a Basic Virtual Host

Here’s a minimal example for example.com:

server {
    listen       80;
    server_name  example.com www.example.com;

    root   /var/www/example.com/html;
    index  index.html;

    location / {
        try_files $uri $uri/ =404;
    }
}

Key directives:

listen 80;
Binds this block to port 80 (HTTP).
server_name
Lists domains and subdomains handled here.
root
Points to the document root where your site files live.
index
Specifies the default file to serve.
location /
Tries to serve the requested URI or returns 404 if not found.

Binding to an IP Address

You can serve content directly from an IP address instead of a domain:

server {
    listen       80;
    server_name  172.217.22.14;

    root   /var/www/172.217.22.14/html;
    index  index.html;

    location / {
        try_files $uri $uri/ =404;
    }
}

This approach is useful for internal test servers or when DNS is not available.

Serving on a Non-Standard Port

If your application runs on a different port (e.g., Jenkins on 8080), you can expose it:

server {
    listen       8080;
    server_name  wiki.example.com;

    root   /var/www/wiki.example.com/html;
    index  index.html;

    location / {
        try_files $uri $uri/ =404;
    }
}

Users must browse to http://wiki.example.com:8080.

Note

For production, it’s best to configure a reverse proxy on ports 80/443 and forward traffic internally to port 8080. This avoids requiring users to specify :8080 in the URL.

Managing Multiple Server Blocks

You can place several server blocks in one file, but for maintainability, isolate each site into its own configuration:

server {
    listen       80;
    server_name  honda.cars.com;

    root   /var/www/honda.cars.com/html;
    index  index.html;

    location / {
        try_files $uri $uri/ =404;
    }
}

server {
    listen       80;
    server_name  toyota.cars.com;

    root   /var/www/toyota.cars.com/html;
    index  index.html;

    location / {
        try_files $uri $uri/ =404;
    }
}

Warning

Keep each site’s configuration in its own file (e.g., /etc/nginx/sites-available/honda.cars.com and symlink to /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/). A typo in one file won’t take down all your sites when you reload Nginx.

Quick Reference: Nginx Directives

Directive	Purpose	Example
listen	Port for incoming connections	`listen 80;`
server_name	Domain(s) served by this block	`server_name example.com www.example.com;`
root	Path to website files	`root /var/www/example.com/html;`
index	Default file to serve	`index index.html;`
location /	URI handling and fallback rules	`try_files $uri $uri/ =404;`

Links and References

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