I, like most people, started out by using Apache and really didn’t see anything wrong with it.  It’s relatively easy to setup, it’s used by most sites so support is a snap and a default and it’s already installed on most distributions. The thing is, it’s slow, the easy of use is paid for by speed.

So this is where Nginx comes in.  Nginx is not the easiest software to setup.  It requires you to tell it what different file types you will be using and how to handle them.  It requires you to tell it where scripts live and where static files live.  It also requires you to use an external php server, such as FastCGI.

PHP-FPM Setup

Nginx does not provide FastCGI for you (FastCGI is what your web server uses to interact with WordPress’s PHP code), so you’ve got to have a way to spawn your own FastCGI processes.

My preferred method is using of running FastCGI is with php-fpm.  Since I’m using Fedora, and there is a yum packet already built for php-fpm, it’s quick and easy to install.

Installing php-fpm is pretty straightforward:

yum install php-fpm

After installing php-fpm you have to start it. The rpm for php-fpm installs the service script for you, you only need to enable starting at boot, and start the process.

chkconfig php-fpm on
service php-fpm start

Nginx

The next part is to install Nginx on your server.  This is as straightforward as installing php-fpm on Fedora, when using yum.

yum install nginx

Once Nginx is installed, you need to set it up to server your site.

Configuring Nginx for WordPress

So we now have the needed software installed, next we need to set it all up. Below is the config for a standard, simple WordPress site named example.com.
nginx.conf:

http {
    include       /etc/nginx/mime.types;
    default_type  application/octet-stream;

    log_format  main  '$remote_addr - $remote_user [$time_local] $http_host "$request" '
                      '$status $body_bytes_sent "$http_referer" '
                      '"$http_user_agent" "$http_x_forwarded_for"';

    access_log  /var/log/nginx/access.log  main;
    sendfile        on;
    #tcp_nopush     on;
    rewrite_log     on;
    keepalive_timeout  5;
    index              index.php index.html index.htm;

    # Upstream to abstract backend connection(s) for PHP.
    upstream php {
        server unix:/var/run/php-fpm.socket;
    }

    server {
        listen 80;
        server_name example.com;
        server_name www.example.com;
        root /var/www/example.com;

        if ($http_host != "example.com") {
                rewrite ^ http://example.com$request_uri permanent;
        }

        include wordpress.conf;
    }
}

wordpress.conf:

# WordPress single blog rules.
# Designed to be included in any server {} block.

# Deny all attempts to access hidden files such as .htaccess, .htpasswd, .DS_Store (Mac).
location ~ /. {
        deny all;
        access_log off;
        log_not_found off;
}

# Deny access to any files with a .php extension in the uploads directory
location ~* ^/wp-content/uploads/.*.php$ {
        deny all;
        access_log off;
        log_not_found off;
}

# Deny access to any files with a .php extension in the uploads directory for multisite
location ~* /files/(.*).php$ {
        deny all;
        access_log off;
        log_not_found off;
}

# This order might seem weird - this is attempted to match last if rules below fail.
# http://wiki.nginx.org/HttpCoreModule
location / {
        try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php?$args;
}

# Add trailing slash to */wp-admin requests.
rewrite /wp-admin$ $scheme://$host$uri/ permanent;

# Directives to send expires headers and turn off 404 error logging.
location ~* .(js|css|png|jpg|jpeg|gif|ico|ttf)$ {
        expires 180d;
        log_not_found off;
}

# Pass all .php files onto a php-fpm/php-fcgi server.
location ~ .php$ {
        # Zero-day exploit defense.
        # http://forum.nginx.org/read.php?2,88845,page=3
        # Won't work properly (404 error) if the file is not stored on this server, which is entirely possible with php-fpm/php-fcgi.
        # Comment the 'try_files' line out if you set up php-fpm/php-fcgi on another machine.  And then cross your fingers that you won't get hacked.
        try_files $uri =404;

        fastcgi_split_path_info ^(.+.php)(/.+)$;
        #NOTE: You should have "cgi.fix_pathinfo = 0;" in php.ini

        include fastcgi_params;
        fastcgi_index index.php;
        fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
#       fastcgi_intercept_errors on;
        fastcgi_pass php;
}