NGINX sites-available vs sites-enabled
Feb 11 2024
While working with NGINX, sites-available and sites-enabled are directories commonly used to manage virtual hosts or server blocks. Let's discover differences between them.
sites-available
The sites-available directory contains configuration files for individual virtual hosts or server blocks. Each file in this directory represents a separate configuration for a specific website or application.
sites-enabled
The sites-enabled directory contains symbolic links to the configuration files in the sites-available directory. These symbolic links are active configurations that NGINX will use.
How They Work
Here's a typical workflow:
- Create a new configuration file in sites-available for each virtual host or server block.
- Use the ln -s command to create a symbolic link from sites-available to sites-enabled for the configurations you want to enable.
- Reload or restart NGINX to apply the changes.
For example, to enable a site configuration:
sudo ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/example.com /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/
sudo service nginx reload
This structure provides a modular and organized way to manage NGINX configurations. You can keep various configurations in the sites-available directory and activate them as needed by creating symbolic links in the sites-enabled directory.
Conclusion
In this article, we have discovered the differences between sites-available and sites-enabled in NGINX.
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