ikiwiki/ tips/ nginx

There's a lot of scattered info about nginx. This is what I've deduced from reading various blogs, Debian READMEs and the nginx wiki.

For Debian I suggest installing nginx from dotdeb. They provide the latest stable versions.

For cgi install `fcgiwrap`

Here is a full sites-enabled/example.com configure for hosting ikiwiki on the root domain, example.com:

    server {
        listen 443 default_server;
            listen [::]:443 ssl default_server;
        root /home/ikiwiki/public_html/wiki;

        index index.html;

        server_name example.com www.example.com;

        ssl_certificate /etc/nginx/ssl/example.com.pem;
        ssl_certificate_key /etc/nginx/ssl/example.com.key;

        ssl_session_timeout 5m;
        ssl_session_cache shared:SSL:50m;
        ssl_dhparam /etc/nginx/ssl/dhparam.pem;
        ssl_prefer_server_ciphers on;
        ssl_protocols TLSv1 TLSv1.1 TLSv1.2;
        ssl_ciphers "ECDHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384:ECDHE-RSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256:DHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384:DHE-RSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256:ECDHE-RSA-AES256-SHA384:ECDHE-RSA-AES128-SHA256:ECDHE-RSA-AES256-SHA:ECDHE-RSA-AES128-SHA:DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA256:DHE-RSA-AES128-SHA256:DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA:DHE-RSA-AES128-SHA:ECDHE-RSA-DES-CBC3-SHA:EDH-RSA-DES-CBC3-SHA:AES256-GCM-SHA384:AES128-GCM-SHA256:AES256-SHA256:AES128-SHA256:AES256-SHA:AES128-SHA:DES-CBC3-SHA:HIGH:!aNULL:!eNULL:!EXPORT:!DES:!MD5:!PSK:!RC4";
        resolver 8.8.8.8;
        ssl_stapling on;
        ssl_trusted_certificate /etc/nginx/ssl/example.com.pem;
        add_header Strict-Transport-Security "max-age=31536000; includeSubdomains;";

            client_max_body_size 10m;

            # ikiwiki site

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

            location ~ .cgi {
                    gzip off;
                    fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/fcgiwrap.socket;
                    include /etc/nginx/fastcgi_params;

            }
    }

    ##
    #Forward http to https
    ##

    server {
            listen 80 default_server;
            listen [::]:80 default_server;
            server_name example.com www.example.com;
            return 301 https://$host$request_uri;
    }

For SSL tips this gist is a good source of information. Use letsencrypt to get free certificates.