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Optimum config for NodeBB under NGINX

Performance
  • I noticed that my v3 instance of NodeBB in test was so much slower than live, but was using the same database etc. On closer inspection, the nginx configuration needed a tweak, so I’m posting my settings here so others can benefit from it. Note, that various aspects have been redacted for obvious privacy and security reasons, and to this end, you will need to substitute these values for those that exist in your own environment.

    server {
        # Ensure you put your server name here, such as example.com www.example.com etc.
    	server_name sservername;
    	listen x.x.x.x:443 ssl http2;
    	access_log /path/to/access.log;
    	error_log /path/to/error.log;
    
    	ssl_certificate /path/to/ssl.combined;
    	ssl_certificate_key /path/to/ssl.key;
        # You may not need the below values, so feel free to remove these if not required
    	rewrite ^\Q/mail/config-v1.1.xml\E(.*) $scheme://$host/cgi-bin/autoconfig.cgi$1 break;
    	rewrite ^\Q/.well-known/autoconfig/mail/config-v1.1.xml\E(.*) $scheme://$host/cgi-bin/autoconfig.cgi$1 break;
    	rewrite ^\Q/AutoDiscover/AutoDiscover.xml\E(.*) $scheme://$host/cgi-bin/autoconfig.cgi$1 break;
    	rewrite ^\Q/Autodiscover/Autodiscover.xml\E(.*) $scheme://$host/cgi-bin/autoconfig.cgi$1 break;
    	rewrite ^\Q/autodiscover/autodiscover.xml\E(.*) $scheme://$host/cgi-bin/autoconfig.cgi$1 break;
        # You may not need the above values, so feel free to remove these if not required
    
    	client_body_buffer_size 10K;
    	client_header_buffer_size 1k;
    	client_max_body_size 8m;
    	large_client_header_buffers 4 4k;
    
    	client_body_timeout 12;
    	client_header_timeout 12;
    	keepalive_timeout 15;
    	send_timeout 10;
    
    
        proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
        proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
        proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Proto $scheme;
        proxy_set_header Host $http_host;
        proxy_set_header X-NginX-Proxy true;
        proxy_redirect off;
    
        # Socket.io Support
        proxy_http_version 1.1;
        proxy_set_header Upgrade $http_upgrade;
        proxy_set_header Connection "upgrade";
    	gzip on;
    	gzip_disable "msie6";
    	gzip_vary on;
    	gzip_proxied any;
    	gzip_min_length 1024;
    	gzip_comp_level 6;
    	gzip_buffers 16 8k;
    	gzip_http_version 1.1;
    	gzip_types text/plain text/css application/json application/javascript text/xml application/xml application/xml+rss text/javascript;
    
        add_header X-XSS-Protection "1; mode=block";
        add_header X-Download-Options "noopen" always;
        add_header Content-Security-Policy "upgrade-insecure-requests" always;
        add_header Referrer-Policy 'no-referrer' always;
        add_header Permissions-Policy "accelerometer=(), camera=(), geolocation=(), gyroscope=(), magnetometer=(), microphone=(), payment=(), usb=()" always;
        # This is the string that will show in the headers if requested, so you can put what you want in here. Keep it clean :)
        add_header X-Powered-By "<whatever you want here>" always;
        add_header X-Permitted-Cross-Domain-Policies "none" always;
        location / {
        # Don't forget to change the port to the one you use. I have a non-standard one :)
        proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:5000;
        }
    
        location @nodebb {
            # Don't forget to change the port to the one you use. I have a non-standard one :)
            proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:5000;
        }
    
        location ~ ^/assets/(.*) {
            root /path/to/nodebb/;
            try_files /build/public/$1 /public/$1 @nodebb;
            add_header Cache-Control "max-age=31536000";
        }
    
        location /plugins/ {
            root /path/to/nodebb/build/public/;
            try_files $uri @nodebb;
            add_header Cache-Control "max-age=31536000";
        }
    
    	if ($scheme = http) {
            # Ensure you set your actual domain here
    		rewrite ^/(?!.well-known)(.*) https://yourdomain/$1 break;
    	}
    }
    
    

    I’ve added comments at the obvious places where you need to make changes. Depending on how your server is configured, and it’s capabilities, this should improve performance no end.

    There is a caveat though, and it’s an important one

    Don’t use insane levels in the below section

    	client_body_buffer_size 10K;
    	client_header_buffer_size 1k;
    	client_max_body_size 8m;
    	large_client_header_buffers 4 4k;
    
    	client_body_timeout 12;
    	client_header_timeout 12;
    	keepalive_timeout 15;
    	send_timeout 10;
    

    Keep to these values, and if anything, adjust them DOWN to suit your server.

  • Further configuration changes can be made to the nginx core itself, although my recommendation here is to leave this alone unless you are sure you know what you are doing.

    https://webdock.io/en/docs/webdock-control-panel/optimizing-performance/optimizing-nginx-high-traffic-websites

  • phenomlabundefined phenomlab marked this topic as a regular topic on
  • hi @phenomlab , is there any reason that you do not use 4567?

    Additionally, do you scale your forum up to 3 ports?

    https://docs.nodebb.org/configuring/scaling/

  • @crazycells hi - no security reason, or anything specific in this case. However, the nginx.conf I posted was from my Dev environment which uses this port as a way of not interfering with production.

    And yes, I use clustering on this site with three instances.


  • 2 Votes
    3 Posts
    155 Views

    Just had a look through the new Free NGINX website, which looks like an 80’s throwback and that it was created using a ZX Spectrum 🙂

    https://freenginx.org

    Love the sarcastic note…

    image.png

  • 0 Votes
    17 Posts
    366 Views

    @DownPW anytime

  • 13 Votes
    17 Posts
    468 Views

    @小城风雨多 I was a die-hard OnePlus user since the 6T, but my experience with the 9 series has left me extremely disappointed and I probably won’t go back now I have a Samsung S23+ which works perfectly.

  • SEO and Nodebb

    Performance
    2
    2 Votes
    2 Posts
    137 Views

    @Panda It’s the best it’s ever been to be honest. I’ve used a myriad of systems in the past - most notably, WordPress, and then Flarum (which for SEO, was absolutely dire - they never even had SEO out of the box, and relied on a third party extension to do it), and NodeBB easily fares the best - see below example

    https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Asudonix.org&oq=site%3Asudonix.org&aqs=chrome..69i57j69i60j69i58j69i60l2.9039j0j3&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#ip=1

    However, this was not without significant effort on my part once I’d migrated from COM to ORG - see below posts

    https://community.nodebb.org/topic/17286/google-crawl-error-after-site-migration/17?_=1688461250365

    And also

    https://support.google.com/webmasters/thread/221027803?hl=en&msgid=221464164

    It was painful to say the least - as it turns out, there was an issue in NodeBB core that prevented spiders from getting to content, which as far as I understand, is now fixed. SEO in itself is a dark art - a black box that nobody really fully understands, and it’s essentially going to boil down to one thing - “content”.

    Google’s algorithm for indexing has also changed dramatically over the years. They only now crawl content that has value, so if it believes that your site has nothing to offer, it will simply skip it.

  • 5 Votes
    1 Posts
    247 Views
    No one has replied
  • NodeBB 1.19.3

    Solved Performance
    33
    4 Votes
    33 Posts
    3k Views

    @phenomlab

    I find the problem Mark 😉

    The error message indicated this path :

    http://localhost:4567/assets/plugins/nodebb-plugin-emoji/emoji/styles.css?v=6983dobg16u

    I change the path url on config.json

    47bacc80-f141-41e4-a261-3f8d650cc6f6-image.png

    And all it’s good 🙂

    Weird, I didn’t have to change that path before 1.19.3

    But this does not prevent the problem from a clean install with Emoji Plugin

    EDIT: After test, that resolv the problem installation for 1.18.x but not for 1.19.x (I have other error message when I run ./nodebb Setup

    For resume: NodeJS 16_x with 1.18.x is ok

  • Digitalocean Ubuntu configuration

    Solved Linux
    33
    12 Votes
    33 Posts
    2k Views

    @phenomlab thank you! not me 🙂

  • Virtualmin Letsencrypt Renewal

    Solved Hosting
    13
    1 Votes
    13 Posts
    1k Views

    @gotwf said in Virtualmin Letsencrypt Renewal:

    I favor KISS engineering

    Then I think you’ll be able to appreciate this
    https://content.sudonix.com/keep-it-simple-stupid/