How to Host a Website on a VPS with Nginx and HTTPS

Shared hosting is easy, but a VPS gives you speed, root access and no noisy neighbours. This guide takes a fresh Ubuntu 24.04 or 22.04 server to a live HTTPS website using Nginx, in about twenty minutes. Every command can be copied as is.

What you need

• A VPS with at least 1 vCPU and 1 GB of RAM (our basic plans are enough for most small sites).
• A domain name pointed at the server's IP address (see our guide on pointing a domain to a VPS).
• SSH access as a sudo user. If the server is brand new, do the basic hardening first.

1. Install Nginx

sudo apt update
sudo apt install -y nginx
sudo systemctl enable --now nginx

Open your server's IP address in a browser. You should see the default Nginx welcome page. If you do not, check that your firewall allows ports 80 and 443:

sudo ufw allow "Nginx Full"
sudo ufw status

2. Create the site folder

sudo mkdir -p /var/www/example.com/html
sudo chown -R $USER:$USER /var/www/example.com
echo "<h1>It works</h1>" > /var/www/example.com/html/index.html

Replace example.com with your own domain throughout.

3. Add a server block

sudo nano /etc/nginx/sites-available/example.com

server {
    listen 80;
    listen [::]:80;
    server_name example.com www.example.com;
    root /var/www/example.com/html;
    index index.html;

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

Enable it, test the configuration and reload:

sudo ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/example.com /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/
sudo nginx -t
sudo systemctl reload nginx

4. Add free HTTPS with Let's Encrypt

sudo apt install -y certbot python3-certbot-nginx
sudo certbot --nginx -d example.com -d www.example.com

Certbot edits your server block, redirects HTTP to HTTPS and installs a timer that renews the certificate automatically. Check the timer with systemctl list-timers | grep certbot.

5. Make it faster

Turn on compression and browser caching for static files. Add this inside the server block:

gzip on;
gzip_types text/css application/javascript application/json image/svg+xml;

location ~* \.(css|js|png|jpg|jpeg|webp|svg|woff2)$ {
    expires 30d;
    add_header Cache-Control "public";
}

Reload Nginx afterwards. For dynamic sites such as WordPress, install PHP-FPM and pass .php requests to it, or put a cache plugin in front.

Common problems

• 403 Forbidden: Nginx cannot read the folder. Check ownership and that every parent directory is executable (chmod o+x).
• Certbot fails: the domain is not pointing at the server yet, or port 80 is blocked.
• Default page still shows: remove /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/default and reload.