In this tutorial, we will show you how to install and configuration of Nginx on your CentOS 6 server. For those of you who didn’t know, Nginx is a powerful web server software that can be used on your server. Itis also known for its high performance and low memory usage which will allow fewer resources to be used but getting the job done efficiently.
This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple. I will show you through the step by step installation Nginx on CentOS 6 server.
Install Nginx on CentOS 6
Step 1. First, add EPEL repository and make sure that all packages are up to date.
yum install epel-release yum -y update
Step 2. Install Nginx.
Type the following yum command to install Nginx web-server:
yum install nginx
Start Nginx and add it to automatically start on your system start-up using:
service nginx start chkconfig nginx on
Step 3. Accessing the Nginx web server.
You can verify that Nginx is really running by opening your favourite web browser and entering the URL http://your-server’s-address and you need to open port 80 to make your web server accessible:
/sbin/iptables -I INPUT -p tcp --dport 80 -j ACCEPT /etc/rc.d/init.d/iptables save

You can further customize the settings of your NGINX web server by changing the settings of its configuration files, you can also check the logs for any error debugging or simple maintenance routines. These files are:
- Configuration directory: /etc/nginx/
- SSL and vhost config directory: /etc/nginx/conf.d/
- Log file directory: /var/log/nginx/
- Document root directory: /usr/share/nginx/html
- Configuration file: /etc/nginx/nginx.conf
- Server access log file: /var/log/nginx/access.log
- Server error log file: /var/log/nginx/error.log
Congratulations! You have successfully installed Nginx. Thanks for using this tutorial for installing Nginx on CentOS 6 system. For additional help or useful information, we recommend you to check the official Nginx web site.