Drupal 8/9, nginx and Let's Encrypt

This site is powered by Drupal 10. I'm using Nginx as a web server and Let's Encrypt to add HTTPS encryption to my site. In this blog post, I will show you how my Nginx config file looks like.

My domain is gorannikolovski.com

All requests are redirected to the https-without-www version. That means that if a user types any of these:

• http://www.gorannikolovski.com
• https://www.gorannikolovski.com
• http://www.gorannikolovski.com

he or she will be redirected to https://gorannikolovski.com

Here is my Nginx config file:

server {
  server_name gorannikolovski.com;
  root /var/www/gorannikolovski.com/web; ## <-- Your only path reference.

  access_log /var/log/web/gorannikolovski.com_access_log;
  error_log /var/log/web/gorannikolovski.com_error_log;

  gzip on;
  gzip_comp_level 6;
  gzip_vary on;
  gzip_min_length 1000;
  gzip_proxied expired no-cache no-store private auth;
  gzip_types text/plain application/javascript application/x-javascript text/javascript text/xml text/css;
  gzip_disable "MSIE [1-6]\.";

  location = /favicon.ico {
    log_not_found off;
    access_log off;
  }

  location = /robots.txt {
    allow all;
    log_not_found off;
    access_log off;
  }

  # Very rarely should these ever be accessed outside of your lan
  location ~* \.(txt|log)$ {
    allow 192.168.0.0/16;
    deny all;
  }

  location ~ \..*/.*\.php$ {
    return 403;
  }

  location ~ ^/sites/.*/private/ {
    return 403;
  }

  # Allow "Well-Known URIs" as per RFC 5785
  location ~* ^/.well-known/ {
    allow all;
  }

  # Block access to "hidden" files and directories whose names begin with a
  # period. This includes directories used by version control systems such
  # as Subversion or Git to store control files.
  location ~ (^|/)\. {
    return 403;
  }

  location / {
    # try_files $uri @rewrite; # For Drupal <= 6
    try_files $uri /index.php?$query_string; # For Drupal >= 7
  }

  location @rewrite {
    rewrite ^/(.*)$ /index.php?q=$1;
  }

  # Don't allow direct access to PHP files in the vendor directory.
  location ~ /vendor/.*\.php$ {
    deny all;
    return 404;
  }

  # In Drupal 8, we must also match new paths where the '.php' appears in
  # the middle, such as update.php/selection. The rule we use is strict,
  # and only allows this pattern with the update.php front controller.
  # This allows legacy path aliases in the form of
  # blog/index.php/legacy-path to continue to route to Drupal nodes. If
  # you do not have any paths like that, then you might prefer to use a
  # laxer rule, such as:
  #   location ~ \.php(/|$) {
  # The laxer rule will continue to work if Drupal uses this new URL
  # pattern with front controllers other than update.php in a future
  # release.
  location ~ '\.php$|^/update.php' {
    fastcgi_split_path_info ^(.+?\.php)(|/.*)$;
    # Security note: If you're running a version of PHP older than the
    # latest 5.3, you should have "cgi.fix_pathinfo = 0;" in php.ini.
    # See http://serverfault.com/q/627903/94922 for details.
    fastcgi_param APP_ENV GOCLOUD-LIVE;
    include fastcgi_params;
    # Block httpoxy attacks. See https://httpoxy.org/.
    fastcgi_param HTTP_PROXY "";
    fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
    fastcgi_param PATH_INFO $fastcgi_path_info;
    fastcgi_param QUERY_STRING $query_string;
    fastcgi_intercept_errors on;
    fastcgi_pass 127.0.0.1:9000;
  }

  # Fighting with Styles? This little gem is amazing.
  # location ~ ^/sites/.*/files/imagecache/ { # For Drupal <= 6
  location ~ ^/sites/.*/files/styles/ { # For Drupal >= 7
    try_files $uri @rewrite;
  }

  # Handle private files through Drupal. Private file's path can come
  # with a language prefix.
  location ~ ^(/[a-z\-]+)?/system/files/ { # For Drupal >= 7
    try_files $uri /index.php?$query_string;
  }

  location ~* \.(js|css|png|jpg|jpeg|gif|ico|svg)$ {
    try_files $uri @rewrite;
    expires max;
    log_not_found off;
  }

  listen 443 ssl; # managed by Certbot
  ssl_certificate /etc/letsencrypt/live/gorannikolovski.com/fullchain.pem; # managed by Certbot
  ssl_certificate_key /etc/letsencrypt/live/gorannikolovski.com/privkey.pem; # managed by Certbot
}

server {
  if ($host = gorannikolovski.com) {
    return 301 https://$host$request_uri;
  } # managed by Certbot

  server_name gorannikolovski.com;
  listen 80;
  return 404; # managed by Certbot
}

server {
  listen 80;
  server_name www.gorannikolovski.com;
  return 301 https://gorannikolovski.com$request_uri;
}

server {
  listen 443 ssl http2;
  server_name www.gorannikolovski.com;
  ssl_certificate /etc/letsencrypt/live/gorannikolovski.com/fullchain.pem;
  ssl_certificate_key /etc/letsencrypt/live/gorannikolovski.com/privkey.pem;
  return 301 https://gorannikolovski.com$request_uri;
}

Code blocks that are commented with # managed by Certbot are automatically inserted by Certbot. Certbot is a tool that is installed on your server and by running one command:

certbot

you can choose domains for which you want to add Let's Encrypt HTTPS encryption. This is how that looks like:

Now, that's pretty cool.

Certbot will update your config files so that you don't have to manually do that.  I'm using Ubuntu 20.04 on my server so I followed these instructions: ubuntubionic-nginx to install Certbot, but there are also instructions for many other systems.