How to Setup WordPress Nginx with FastCGI Caching in CentOS 7

If you plan to run high traffic wordpress blog(wordpress nginx), i would suggest to run it in virtual private server (VPS) or dedicated server together with NGINX FastCGI Caching.

Besides the low memory consumption when using Nginx as a web server, it has a fast performance. When you combine Nginx and FastCGI Caching module, you will further enhance the performance of your web application, including a WordPress site.

This can be an alternative to NGINX + Varnish setup that uses caching technology to accelerate the performance of wordpress site.

Nginx FastCGI module has instructions for caching dynamic content that is served through a PHP backend.

When a web page is cached, repeated requests for the same page with quickly returned to a customer by the nginx web server because it comes from the cache location.

The following tutorial will guide you to setup WordPress Nginx in CentOS 7 VPS. This setup has been tested in linode 4GB and ramnode 2GB VPS.

Prerequisites :
a) Assume that the linux CentOS 7 VPS has been setup properly with Mariadb as a database and Nginx as a web server run together with PHP-FPM.
b) You have domain name for your wordpress site and dns record pointing to your VPS ip address.

www.ehowstuff.local -> 10.9.8.7

1. To install Nginx in CentOS run the following commands to create Nginx repository file in CentOS.

vi /etc/yum.repos.d/nginx.repo

[nginx]
name=nginx repo
baseurl=http://nginx.org/packages/centos/$releasever/$basearch/
gpgcheck=0
enabled=1

2. To install nginx, php, php-mysql MariaDB server, run the following command :

# yum install nginx php php-mysql php-fpm mariadb-server

3. Configure php-fpm :

Below are the configuration value for 4Gb ram VPS :

# vi /etc/php-fpm.d/www.conf

listen = 127.0.0.1:9000

listen.allowed_clients = 127.0.0.1

listen.mode = 0666

user = nginx
group = nginx

pm = dynamic

pm.max_children = 20

pm.start_servers = 15

pm.min_spare_servers = 15

pm.max_spare_servers = 15

pm.max_requests = 500

4. Configure NGINX with FastCGI Caching :

This is the main configuration file for Nginx.

# vi /etc/nginx/nginx.conf

user  nginx;
worker_processes  2;

error_log  /var/log/nginx/error.log warn;
pid        /var/run/nginx.pid;


events {
    worker_connections  1024;
}


http {
    include       /etc/nginx/mime.types;
    default_type  application/octet-stream;

    log_format  main  '$remote_addr - $remote_user [$time_local] "$request" '
                      '$status $body_bytes_sent "$http_referer" '
                      '"$http_user_agent" "$http_x_forwarded_for"';

    log_format blocked '$time_local: Blocked request from $remote_addr $request';
    access_log  /var/log/nginx/access.log  main;

    include /etc/nginx/conf.d/common.conf;
    include /etc/nginx/conf.d/gzip.conf;

    #FastCGI Cache and other configuration options
    include /etc/nginx/conf.d/option.conf;

    #Nginx for WordPress and security
    include /etc/nginx/conf.d/wordpress.conf;
    
    #Configure Nginx Fast-CGI Cache Exceptions
    include /etc/nginx/conf.d/fastcgi_no_cache.conf;
    
    #Multiple wordpress sites container
    include /etc/nginx/sites-available/*.conf;
}

It is recommended to split a custom configuration of the original nginx.conf to make it easier to read and do modification.

# vi /etc/nginx/conf.d/common.conf

# Global configuration file.
# ESSENTIAL : Configure Nginx Listening Port
listen 80;
# ESSENTIAL : Default file to serve. If the first file isn't found,
index index.php index.html index.htm;
# ESSENTIAL : no favicon logs
location = /favicon.ico {
    log_not_found off;
    access_log off;
}
# ESSENTIAL : robots.txt
location = /robots.txt {
    allow all;
    log_not_found off;
    access_log off;
}
# ESSENTIAL : Configure 404 Pages
error_page 404 /404.html;
# ESSENTIAL : Configure 50x Pages
error_page 500 502 503 504 /50x.html;
    location = /50x.html {
        root /usr/share/nginx/html;
    }
# SECURITY : Deny all attempts to access hidden files .abcde
location ~ /\. {
    deny all;
}
# PERFORMANCE : Set expires headers for static files and turn off logging.
location ~* ^.+\.(js|css|swf|xml|txt|ogg|ogv|svg|svgz|eot|otf|woff|mp4|ttf|rss|atom|jpg|jpeg|gif|png|ico|zip|tgz|gz|rar|bz2|doc|xls|exe|ppt|tar|mid|midi|wav|bmp|rtf)$ {
    access_log off; log_not_found off; expires 30d;
   #    expires max;
   add_header Pragma no-cache;
   add_header Cache-Control "public";
}

vi /etc/nginx/conf.d/gzip.conf

gzip  on;
gzip_comp_level 6;
gzip_proxied any;
gzip_min_length 1100;
gzip_buffers 16 8k;
gzip_disable "MSIE [1-6]\.(?!.*SV1)";

gzip_types text/css text/x-component application/ecmascript application/json application/pdf application/javascript application/x-javascript text/javascript application/postscript text/x-js text/richtext image/svg+xml text/plain text/xsd text/xsl text/xml image/x-icon;

gzip_http_version 1.1;
gzip_vary on;

vi /etc/nginx/conf.d/option.conf

## FAST-CGI Configurations
fastcgi_cache_path /etc/nginx/cache levels=1:2 keys_zone=WPCACHE:1024m inactive=60m;
fastcgi_cache_key "$scheme$request_method$host$request_uri";
fastcgi_cache_use_stale error timeout invalid_header http_500;
fastcgi_ignore_headers Cache-Control Expires Set-Cookie;
add_header X-Fastcgi-Cache $upstream_cache_status;

## Other server option
access_log      off;
sendfile        on;
tcp_nopush      on;
tcp_nodelay     on;
server_tokens   off;
keepalive_requests 100000;
reset_timedout_connection on;
port_in_redirect off;
client_body_timeout  1460;
client_header_timeout 1460;
client_max_body_size 10m;
send_timeout 1460;
keepalive_timeout 1300;

vi /etc/nginx/conf.d/wordpress.conf

# WORDPRESS : Rewrite rules, sends everything through index.php and keeps the appended query string intact
location / {
    try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php?q=$uri&$args;
}

# SECURITY : Deny all attempts to access PHP Files in the uploads directory
location ~* /(?:uploads|files)/.*\.php$ {
    deny all;
}


# REQUIREMENTS : Enable PHP Support
location ~ \.php$ {
# SECURITY : Zero day Exploit Protection
try_files $uri =404;

# ENABLE : Enable PHP, listen fpm sock
fastcgi_split_path_info ^(.+\.php)(/.+)$;
fastcgi_pass   127.0.0.1:9000;
fastcgi_index index.php;
fastcgi_send_timeout 300s;
fastcgi_read_timeout 300s;
include fastcgi_params;
fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
fastcgi_buffer_size 128k;
fastcgi_buffers 256 4k;
fastcgi_busy_buffers_size 256k;
fastcgi_temp_file_write_size 256k;
fastcgi_intercept_errors on;
##Added below for fastcgi_cache
fastcgi_cache_bypass $no_cache;
fastcgi_no_cache $no_cache;
fastcgi_cache WPCACHE;
fastcgi_cache_valid 200 60m;
fastcgi_cache_valid 404 60m;
fastcgi_max_temp_file_size 4m;
fastcgi_cache_use_stale updating;
fastcgi_cache_methods GET HEAD; # Only GET and HEAD methods apply
add_header X-Fastcgi-Cache $upstream_cache_status;
}

# Deny access to htaccess files
location ~ /\. {
        deny all;
}

# Deny access to .php files in the /wp-content/ directory (including sub-folders)
location ~* ^/wp-content/.*.(php|phps)$ {
        deny all;
}

## Block SQL injections
location ~* union.*select.*\( {access_log /var/log/nginx/*.*.log blocked; deny all;}
location ~* union.*all.*select.* {access_log /var/log/nginx/*.*.log blocked; deny all;}
location ~* concat.*\( {access_log /var/log/nginx/*.*.log blocked; deny all;}
#
### Block common exploits
location ~* (< |%3C).*script.*(>|%3E) {access_log /var/log/nginx/*.*.log blocked; deny all;}
location ~* base64_(en|de)code\(.*\) {access_log /var/log/nginx/*.*.log blocked; deny all;}
location ~* (%24&x) {access_log /var/log/nginx/*.*.log blocked; deny all;}
location ~* (%0|%A|%B|%C|%D|%E|%F|127\.0) {access_log /var/log/nginx/*.*.log blocked; deny all;}
location ~* \.\.\/  {access_log /var/log/nginx/*.*.log blocked; deny all;}
location ~* ~$ {access_log /var/log/nginx/*.*.log blocked; deny all;}
location ~* proc/self/environ {access_log /var/log/nginx/*.*.log blocked; deny all;}
location ~* /\.(htaccess|htpasswd|svn) {access_log /var/log/nginx/*.*.log blocked; deny all;}
#
### Block file injections
location ~* [a-zA-Z0-9_]=(\.\.//?)+ {access_log /var/log/nginx/*.*.log blocked; deny all;}
location ~* [a-zA-Z0-9_]=/([a-z0-9_.]//?)+ {access_log /var/log/nginx/*.*.log blocked; deny all;}
#
### wordpress security
location ~* wp-config.php {access_log /var/log/nginx/*.*.log blocked; deny all;}
location ~* wp-admin/includes {access_log /var/log/nginx/*.*.log blocked; deny all;}
location ~* wp-admin/setup-config.php {access_log /var/log/nginx/*.*.log blocked; deny all;}
location ~* wp-app\.log {access_log /var/log/nginx/*.*.log blocked; deny all;}
location ~* (licence|readme|license)\.(html|txt) {access_log /var/log/nginx/*.*.log blocked; deny all;}


# PLUGINS : Enable Rewrite Rules for Yoast SEO SiteMap
rewrite ^/sitemap_index\.xml$ /index.php?sitemap=1 last;
rewrite ^/([^/]+?)-sitemap([0-9]+)?\.xml$ /index.php?sitemap=$1&sitemap_n=$2 last;
rewrite ^/sitemap(-+([a-zA-Z0-9_-]+))?\.xml$ "/index.php?xml_sitemap=params=$2" last;
rewrite ^/sitemap(-+([a-zA-Z0-9_-]+))?\.xml\.gz$ "/index.php?xml_sitemap=params=$2;zip=true" last;
rewrite ^/sitemap(-+([a-zA-Z0-9_-]+))?\.html$ "/index.php?xml_sitemap=params=$2;html=true" last;

Configure Cache Exceptions :

vi /etc/nginx/conf.d/fastcgi_no_cache.conf

set $no_cache 0;

    # POST requests and URLs with a query string should always go to PHP
    if ($request_method = POST) {
        set $no_cache 1;
    }

   if ($query_string != "") {
        set $no_cache 1;
    }

    # Don't cache URIs containing the following segments
    if ($request_uri ~* "/wp-admin/|/xmlrpc.php|wp-.*.php|/feed/|index.php
                         |sitemap(_index)?.xml") {
        set $no_cache 1;
    }

    # Don't use the cache for logged-in users or recent commenters
    if ($http_cookie ~* "comment_author|wordpress_[a-f0-9]+|wp-postpass
        |wordpress_no_cache|wordpress_logged_in") {
        set $no_cache 1;
    }

# mkdir -p /etc/nginx/sites-available

vi /etc/nginx/sites-available/ehowstuff.local.conf

Add below information :

server {
    listen     80;
    server_name ehowstuff.local;
    rewrite ^/(.*)$ http://www.ehowstuff.local/$1 permanent;
}

server {
        server_name www.ehowstuff.local;
        root /var/www/html/ehowstuff;
        access_log /var/log/nginx/ehowstuff.local.access.log;
        error_log /var/log/nginx/ehowstuff.local.error.log;

3. Create a database for wordpress site with your prefered user and password :

MariaDB [wordpressdb]> CREATE DATABASE wordpressdb;
MariaDB [wordpressdb]> CREATE USER 'wordpressuser'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'wordpresspassword';
MariaDB [wordpressdb]> GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON wordpressdb.* to wordpressuser@localhost;

Extract the wordpress file into web server root directory :

# cd /var/www/html/
# wget http://wordpress.org/latest.tar.gz
# tar xzvf latest.tar.gz
# mv wordpress /var/www/html/ehowstuff

You can follow this steps to install wordpress on CentOS.

4. Start the services and make it auto start at boot :

# systemctl restart nginx && systemctl restart php-fpm && systemctl restart mariadb
# systemctl enable nginx && systemctl enable php-fpm && systemctl enable mariadb