How to Install and Configure Nginx with PHP-FPM on CentOS 8

Nginx is a free, open-source, and one of the most powerful web servers worldwide. It is mainly used for high-loaded and high-traffic websites. Nginx is known for its stability, simple configuration, and low resource consumption. You can use Nginx as a web server and reverse proxy.

FPM stands for FastCGI Process Manager is an alternative PHP FastCGI implementation of PHP and used for high-traffic websites. It is commonly used with webserver to serve PHP pages. PHP-FPM uses less memory and CPU compared to any other method of running PHP. PHP-FPM is faster than traditional CGI-based methods for multi-user PHP environments. PHP-FPM also allows to run multiple version of PHP at a time.

This tutorial will teach us how to install Nginx with PHP-FPM support in CentOS 8.

Prerequisites

• A server running CentOS 8.
• A root password is configured on your server.

Getting Started

By default, SELinux is enabled in CentOS 8 server. So you will need to disable it first.

You can do this by editing /etc/selinux/config file:

nano /etc/selinux/config

Make the following changes:

SELINUX=disabled

Save and close the file. Then, restart your server to apply the changes.

Install Nginx web Server

First, install the Nginx web server with the following command:

yum install nginx -y

Once the Nginx has been installed, start the Nginx service and enable it to start on boot with the following command:

systemctl start nginx

systemctl enable nginx

Once you have finished, you can proceed to the next step.

Install PHP and PHP-FPM

Next, install PHP and PHP-FPM by running the following command:

yum install php php-cli php-common php-fpm -y

Once all the packages are installed, start the PHP-FPM service and enable it to start after system reboot:

systemctl start php-fpm

systemctl enable php-fpm

You can also check the status of PHP-FPM service with the following command:

systemctl status php-fpm

You should get the following output:

? php-fpm.service - The PHP FastCGI Process Manager
   Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/php-fpm.service; disabled; vendor preset: disabled)
   Active: active (running) since Thu 2019-10-17 05:39:11 EDT; 4min 40s ago
 Main PID: 1475 (php-fpm)
   Status: "Processes active: 0, idle: 5, Requests: 0, slow: 0, Traffic: 0req/sec"
    Tasks: 6 (limit: 5060)
   Memory: 28.5M
   CGroup: /system.slice/php-fpm.service
           ??1475 php-fpm: master process (/etc/php-fpm.conf)
           ??1478 php-fpm: pool www
           ??1479 php-fpm: pool www
           ??1480 php-fpm: pool www
           ??1481 php-fpm: pool www
           ??1482 php-fpm: pool www

Oct 17 05:39:10 centos8 systemd[1]: Starting The PHP FastCGI Process Manager...
Oct 17 05:39:11 centos8 systemd[1]: Started The PHP FastCGI Process Manager.

Create an Index Page for Nginx

Next, you will need to create a sample info.php page to test whether Nginx uses PHP-FPM or not.

You can create an info.php inside Nginx default document root directory as shown below:

nano /var/www/html/info.php

Add the following lines:

Save and close the file when you are finished.

Next, change the ownership of info.php file to the nginx:

chown -R nginx: /var/www/html/info.php/

Configure Nginx with PHP-FPM

Next, you will need to create an Nginx virtual host configuration file and enable PHP-FPM support.

You can create it with the following command:

nano /etc/nginx/conf.d/example.conf

Add the following lines:

server {
    listen 80;
    server_name example.com;
    root /var/www/html/;
    index info.php;

    access_log /var/log/nginx/example.com.access.log;
    error_log /var/log/nginx/example.com.error.log;

    location ~ .php$ {
        try_files $uri =404;
        fastcgi_pass unix:/run/php-fpm/www.sock;
        fastcgi_index   index.php;
        fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
        include fastcgi_params;
    }

    location ~* .(js|css|png|jpg|jpeg|gif|ico|svg)$ {
        expires max;
        log_not_found off;
    }

}

Save and close the file. Then, test Nginx for any syntax error with the following command:

nginx -t

Next, enable the Nginx virtual host file and restart the Nginx service to apply the configuration:

systemctl restart nginx

Test Nginx with PHP-FPM Support

Now, open your web browser and type the URL http://example.com. You will be redirected to the following page:

<img data-ezsrc="https://kirelos.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/echo/page1.png6502f3fc43be6.jpg" ezimgfmt="rs rscb10 src ng ngcb9" height="378" loading="lazy" src="data:image/svg xml,” width=”750″>

<img data-ezsrc="https://kirelos.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/echo/page2.png6502f3fc916e0.jpg" ezimgfmt="rs rscb10 src ng ngcb9" height="332" loading="lazy" src="data:image/svg xml,” width=”750″>

In the above page, you should see that PHP-FPM is loaded with Nginx webserver.

Conclusion

Congratulations! you have successfully installed Nginx with PHP-FPM support on a CentOS 8 server. You can now use PHP-FPM to host multiple websites that use different versions of PHP.