[lnanek2]

My one experience with this server was quite bad. The web group we contracted used it, but would constantly run into issues us developers could have helped them with had they used Apache. Things like needing to return certain headers in the request, or return certain status codes, or do certain things handled easily by Apache's large ecosystem of modules became very grueling trials full of meetings with the contractors running the thing.

Just like Java is sometimes the best language to use because it has huge mind share despite the warts, sometimes Apache is the right server to use just because that's what almost everyone uses and it makes things so much easier than using something more rare.

[harshreality]

You would run into the same situation with contractors who used apache, if they didn't know apache very well.

Returning status codes from nginx is easy. Adding headers is easy. Perhaps you could elaborate about "certain things handled easily by Apache's large ecosystem of modules".

Apache's large ecosystem of modules is built around doing everything in the webserver. More often these days, that stuff is handled by a dynamic application. Nginx talks to those via fastcgi, scgi, uwsgi, or plain http proxying. Nginx does not need to know anything about how the apps do whatever it is they do.

[asto]

Can you give concrete examples of what you couldn't do?

Here's the wiki on how to set headers: http://wiki.nginx.org/HttpHeadersModule

Here's the wiki on returning a particular http code: http://wiki.nginx.org/HttpRewriteModule#return

[herewego]

I'm curious what you issues you ran into as well. I've used it in production environments for the past few years after moving away form Apache. It was a near seamless transition for my team, myself included. We use it behind some heavy iron load balancers and in front of a dozen web servers and it's been a generally pleasant experience.

[genwin]

Why do you use a web server (Nginx) in front of other web servers? I'm pretty new to this. Thanks.

[ceejayoz]

I've seen situations where nginx sits in front of Apache and serves static files directly, but proxies requests for PHP through to Apache for easier setup.

[ObnoxiousJul]

As described, static or lighttpd for static and reverse proxy for the domain achieves more than one goal:

* you can serve page faster; * you can mix on a same domain more than one app from different servers in the DMZ (for sharing domain based mechanism (flash, Cross site ajax) by rewriting the url; * you can have one front (nginx) and several servers, which with heartbeat mechanism can handle failover. * you could (when ssl certificate were only IP based) share one SSL certificate for more than one back (VIP)

It is a pretty low cost quite scalable architecture. I guess you could do it with apache, but I dropped apache since its licence is as understandable as its configurations.

[nl]

would constantly run into issues us developers could have helped them with had they used Apache

I'm not sure that says what you think it does about Ngnix and the developers you deal with...