Web Servers

When we visit a website, our request typically goes to a web server.

The usual flow is:


			user ➞  browser ➞ internet ➞ web server ➞ application server (WordPress) ➞  php ➞ mysql

Depending on the type of web hosting you are using, the web server will be either transparent to you (e.g., WordPress VIP/Heroku) or you will find yourself dealing with it completely or partially (e.g., EasyEngine). But in all cases, web hosting will always have a web server component. Web servers most commonly listen on port 80 (unencrypted) or 443 (encrypted) on the server.

As per W3Techs, until recently, Apache used to be the #1 web server before Nginx surpassed it.

However, when developing for WordPress, we try not to make our features depend on the presence of a web server. That is a reason why server technology ranking shouldn’t concern us.

rtCamp has been using Nginx since 2009, so in rtCamp whenever we refer to a web server, it likely means Nginx.

WordPress and Web Server

As WordPress engineers, we need to deal with web servers in a few special cases:

Some web server configurations can hijack PHP error logs, so you may not see the expected debug outcome.
Some web servers are configured to talk to multiple application servers upstream, so you may not be seeing any hit to WordPress when expected.
Web server (mis)configuration can give you unexpected URL redirects or 404s when working with permalinks/rewrite_rules in WordPress.

EasyDash (Applicable only to rtCampers)

With EasyDash, you can create a test/staging site of your own. Follow the steps mentioned in this EasyDash User Manual to set up your own site.