NGinx Best Practices

What best practices do you use while using NGinx?

How to combine HTTP and HTTPS blocks.

server {
    listen 80;
    listen 443 default ssl;

    # other directives
}

This was posted as an answer to a different question. See here.

By far, the best tips I have ever seen are from the author on it's pitfall page: https://www.nginx.com/resources/wiki/start/topics/tutorials/config_pitfalls/

Generally, using "if" is a bad practice (according to author of nginx). if possible, better to use try_file of error_page directives instead "if (-f ...)"

Combining tip with maintenence.html file and tip with try_files we get:

location / {
    try_files /maintenance.html $uri $uri/ @wordpress;
}

When maintenance ends, just mv maintenance.html from $root.

Configure nginx to use stronger SSL ciphers. By default, SSLv2 is enabled (which you should disable if possible).

ssl_ciphers DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA:DHE-RSA-AES128-SHA:EDH-RSA-DES-CBC3-SHA:AES256-SHA:DES-CBC3-SHA:AES128-SHA:RC4-SHA:RC4-MD5;

http://tumblelog.jauderho.com/post/121851623/nginx-and-stronger-ssl