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These are the steps I took to setup multiple hosts for Nginx on a 256MB Slicehost VPS running Gentoo Linux. They should work in other similar Linux environments. YMMV.

I followed this multiple hosts layout intended for a single admin/user, and adapted for Nginx this virtual host permissions setup written for Apache.

Place your user account in the web server (Nginx) group:

sudo usermod -a -G nginx myuser

Logout, login again, check if you are in the “nginx” group by typing:

groups

Create the “public_html” or “htdocs” or whatever directory that will hold all your websites:

mkdir /home/myuser/public_html

Create a directory for your “default” or “catch-all” website:

mkdir /home/myuser/public_html/default

Make sure the “public_html” directory is owned by your user and belongs to the web server group:

sudo chgrp -R nginx /home/myuser/public_html

Make any files and directories created in the future under “public_html” inherit the same ownership and permissions, so you don’t have to set these permissions again:

sudo chmod -R 2750 /home/myuser/public_html

Edit Nginx’s config file:

sudo nano /etc/nginx/nginx.conf

Modify the “server” section to look something like this: (source)

        server {
                listen          80 default;
                server_name     _ *;
 
                access_log      /var/log/nginx/localhost.access_log main;
                error_log       /var/log/nginx/localhost.error_log info;
 
                location / {
                        index   index.html,index.htm,index.php;
                        root    /home/myuser/public_html/default;
                }
                location ~ .*.php$ {
                        include /etc/nginx/fastcgi_params;
                        fastcgi_pass    127.0.0.1:1026;
                        fastcgi_index   index.php;
                        fastcgi_param   SCRIPT_FILENAME  /home/myuser/public_html/default/$fastcgi_script_name;
                }
        }

Start Nginx:

sudo /etc/init.d/nginx start

Set Nginx to automatically start on bootup:

sudo rc-config add nginx

And you’re done! If you need to add another website in the future, simply add another “server” section to nginx.conf.

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