Nginx virtual hosts, also known as server blocks, allow you to host multiple websites or applications on a single server by directing traffic based on the ports requested by clients.

This method is tested in Debian 12.

The config file we need to edit is located at "/etc/nginx/sites-available/default".

Alternatively, you can create a new config file to set up your virtual hosts, but make sure to tell Nginx the location and name of the new file by editing ""/etc/nginx/nginx.conf".

By default, Nginx has configured 1 virtual host, listening on port 80. Its index directory is /var/www/html. There it will look for files called "index", "index.html", "index.htm", "index.nginx-debian.html". Of course you can change the filenames it it looking for, or the whole path. This is what the default file looks like:

  server {
    listen 80 default_server;
    listen [::]:80 default_server;

    root /var/www/html;
    index index.html index.htm index.nginx-debian.html;

    server_name _;

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

We can now add another virtual host to it. In this example it will listen on port 8080 and have "/var/www/html2/vhost1index.html" as its index file.

This is what the file would look like with this example added:

  server {
    listen 80 default_server;
    listen [::]:80 default_server;

    root /var/www/html;
    index.html;

    server_name _;

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

  server {
    listen 8080;
    listen [::]:8080;

    root /var/www/html2;
    index vhost1index.html;

    server_name vhost1;

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

Now it's time to test our configuration by running following command in our terminal:

# nginx -t
    

When no issues were found, restart Nginx by running:

# systemctl restart nginx
    

Now our server hosts 2 different websites on different ports:

Port 80: default_server | /var/www/html/index.html

Port 8080: vhost1 | /var/www/html2/vhost1index.html