Optimizing Nginx for High Traffic Websites

Worker Configuration

Match workers to your CPU cores and set high connection limits:

worker_processes auto;  # auto-detect CPU cores
worker_rlimit_nofile 65535;

events {
    worker_connections 4096;
    multi_accept on;
    use epoll;
}

Buffering and Timeouts

http {
    sendfile on;
    tcp_nopush on;
    tcp_nodelay on;

    keepalive_timeout 30;
    keepalive_requests 1000;

    client_body_buffer_size 16k;
    client_max_body_size 50m;

    types_hash_max_size 2048;
    server_tokens off;
}

Gzip Compression

gzip on;
gzip_vary on;
gzip_proxied any;
gzip_comp_level 4;
gzip_min_length 1024;
gzip_types
    text/plain
    text/css
    text/javascript
    application/javascript
    application/json
    application/xml
    image/svg+xml;

Static File Caching

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

FastCGI Caching (PHP)

fastcgi_cache_path /var/cache/nginx levels=1:2 keys_zone=PHPCACHE:100m inactive=60m max_size=1g;

server {
    set $skip_cache 0;
    if ($request_method = POST) { set $skip_cache 1; }
    if ($query_string != "") { set $skip_cache 1; }

    location ~ \.php$ {
        fastcgi_cache PHPCACHE;
        fastcgi_cache_valid 200 60m;
        fastcgi_cache_bypass $skip_cache;
        fastcgi_no_cache $skip_cache;
        add_header X-Cache-Status $upstream_cache_status;
    }
}

Rate Limiting

limit_req_zone $binary_remote_addr zone=api:10m rate=10r/s;

location /api/ {
    limit_req zone=api burst=20 nodelay;
}

Open File Cache

open_file_cache max=10000 inactive=30s;
open_file_cache_valid 60s;
open_file_cache_min_uses 2;
open_file_cache_errors on;