Nginx is an open source powerful HTTP server, installation of nginx is very simple and easy. First of all we have to add repositories in sources.list file. You can use the command "vim /etc/apt/sources.list". Repositories for Ubuntu and Debian are listed below.

Ubuntu 10.04:
deb http://nginx.org/packages/ubuntu/ lucid nginx
      deb-src http://nginx.org/packages/ubuntu/ lucid nginx

Debian 6:
deb http://nginx.org/packages/debian/ squeeze nginx
      deb-src http://nginx.org/packages/debian/ squeeze nginx

After adding repositories to sources.list now run this command to install nginx on your system:
 
 # apt-get install nginx

you can check the installation by running nginx:
 


You can also verify whether it is listening on HTTP Port i.e 80 or not by using netstat.

 #  netstat -nlp | grep 80


Now its the time to add PHP support for nginx.  Now add repositories for installation of PHP in sources.list using vim.
 deb http://packages.dotdeb.org stable all
 deb-src http://packages.dotdeb.org stable all


Now do apt-get update, and get the authentic GnuPG key for the repositories:
         # sudo apt-get update
         # wget http://www.dotdeb.org/dotdeb.gpg
         # cat dotdeb.gpg | sudo apt-key add -

Now install PHP by using apt-get

# sudo apt-get install php5-cli  php5-fpm php5-cgi


spawn-fcgi will be used to add php support for nginx

 # sudo apt-get install spawn-fcgi


After installation now we will configure default file of nginx to make it run with php script. The path of  that file is /etc/nginx/sites-available/default.

 # vim /etc/nginx/sites-available/default

server {
    listen   80;
    #root /var/www;
    #index index.html index.htm;
    server_name  localhost;
    access_log  /var/log/nginx/localhost.access.log;

## Default location
    location / {
        root   /var/www;
        index  index.php;
        }

    location ~ \.php$ {
        include /etc/nginx/fastcgi_params;
        fastcgi_pass  127.0.0.1:9000;
        fastcgi_index index.php;
        fastcgi_param  SCRIPT_FILENAME  /var/www$fastcgi_script_name;
        }

}

After setting the default file, path for your web pages will be /var/www/ you have to place all the pages here on this path to make them live over the internet. 

Now you can make php pages and can make them live by using nginx.