Server blocks (virtual hosts)

📘What it really is

• A server block (Nginx's name for a virtual host) describes one site. Nginx chooses which block handles a request by the domain name the browser asked for (the Host header):

# /etc/nginx/sites-available/crm
server {
    listen 80;
    server_name crm.example.in;

    root /srv/crm/web/dist;
    index index.html;

    location / {
        try_files $uri $uri/ /index.html;
    }
}

• root is the folder of files to serve; try_files ... /index.html sends index.html for any address that isn't a real file, which single-page React apps need (Module 36, Lesson 1).

• Enable it: sudo ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/crm /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/, then test and reload.

• Several server blocks with different server_names let one server host crm.example.in, test.example.in and others.

• DNS (Module 6) must point each name to the server's IP address with an A record. For lab practice, add a line to your computer's hosts file instead.

• Useful extras: gzip on; for compression; client_max_body_size 5m; to match your upload limit (Module 45); long cache headers for files with hashed names (Vite's build output).