Introduction

Here are the instructions on how to set up multiple server blocks when using a Nginx web server. This allows hosting multiple websites on a single droplet on DigitalOcean.

Prerequisites

An existing DigitalOcean droplet with sudo user set up.

Step 1 — Create the Folder and Set Permissions

SSH into your Digital Ocean droplet.
Create the necessary directories for our test sites - test1.com and test2.com.

sudo mkdir -p /var/www/test1.com/html
sudo mkdir -p /var/www/test2.com/html

NOTE: mkdir with the -p tag will create the directory and all missing parent directories.

Transfer ownership to the regular user.

sudo chown -R $USER:$USER /var/www/test1.com/html
sudo chown -R $USER:$USER /var/www/test2.com/html

NOTE:
The -R tag will go through directories recursively, changing the ownership for each file.
The $USER is the environmental variable for the user account that we are currently signed in on.
The $USER:$USER will change the ownership of the files along with the file group.

Update the permissions of the web root.

sudo chmod -R 755 /var/www

NOTE: 755 means read and execute access for everyone and write access for the owner of the file.

Step Two — Create Sample Pages for Each Site

Create an index.html file in the previously created folder and add some sample content.

sudo vim /var/www/test1.com/html/index.html

index.html

<html>
<body>
    <h1>First Website</h1>
    <p>Test Paragraph.</p>
</body>
</html>

NOTE: To save the file and exit the Vim editor, press Esc to switch to normal mode, type :wq and hit Enter.

Create a second index.html file similar to the first.

sudo vim /var/www/test2.com/html/index.html

index.html

<html>
<body>
    <h1>Second Website</h1>
    <p>Test Paragraph.</p>
</body>
</html>

Step Three — Create Server Block Files for Each Domain

Use the -v tag to check for the Nginx version and installation. Installed Nginx if it's not already installed.

nginx -v
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install nginx

Copy the default config file for our configurations.

sudo cp /etc/nginx/sites-available/default /etc/nginx/sites-available/test1.com

Open the new file and update the configuration inside to look like what's below.

sudo vim /etc/nginx/sites-available/test1.com

test1.com

server {
    listen 80 default_server;
    listen [::]:80 default_server ipv6only=on;

    root /var/www/test1.com/html;
    index index.html index.htm;

    server_name test1.com www.test1.com;

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

NOTE:
listen tells Nginx the port where it should listen for HTTP connections.
root points to the site’s document root that you created.
server_name is set to match domain name. We can additionally add any aliases that we want to match.

Now do the same for the second server block.

sudo cp /etc/nginx/sites-available/test1.com /etc/nginx/sites-available/test2.com

sudo vim /etc/nginx/sites-available/test2.com

Your file should look something like this:

test2.com

server {
    listen 80;
    listen [::]:80;

    root /var/www/test2.com/html;
    index index.html index.htm;

    server_name test2.com www.test2.com;

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

NOTE: Remove the default_server from the listen directives. Since only one configuration can be set as the default. Furthermore, remove the ipv6only=on option, as it can only be specified once per address/port pair.

Step Four — Enable your Server Blocks

Create symbolic links from these files to the sites-enabled directory.

sudo ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/test1.com /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/
sudo ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/test2.com /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/

NOTE: Nginx reads from sites-enabled during startup. These files are now in the enabled directory. However, the default server block file we used as a template is also enabled currently and will conflict with our file that has the default_server parameter set.

Remove the symbolic link for default so it won't be read.

sudo rm /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/default

Restart Nginx to enable your changes.

sudo service nginx restart