@a_5mith

It turned out I was looking at the wrong default file, it's supposed to be in sites-enabled.

I filled in the missing s, and ran sudo nginx -t and got the following message

nginx: [warn] conflicting server name "domainname.com" on 0.0.0.0:80, ignored
nginx: the configuration file /etc/nginx/nginx.conf syntax is ok
nginx: configuration file /etc/nginx/nginx.conf test is successful

my site is still not up on the domain

what is this conflict it's telling me?

======

Edit: Ok, so I've removed all files in sites-enabled and sites-available. Started over. Created a file in sites-available again. Then ln -s it to sites-enabled.

All [warn] lines disappeared. Configuration of nginx.conf was successful.

Then I tried sudo service nginx reload. Got the same message: reload: Unknown instance:

=====

Edit: I've rebooted my droplet. Reloading nginx was successful. My site is now up on the domain.

Thanks guys!

I don't recall modifying that file.

I've purged and reinstalled nginx before so I don't think what I've done before purging would matter.

I did "sudo nano default" while in directory "/etc/nginx/sites-available/"

I can't find any "erver" without an s in that file. Am I looking at the right file?

Here's the content of that file.

##
# You should look at the following URL's in order to grasp a solid understanding
# of Nginx configuration files in order to fully unleash the power of Nginx.
# http://wiki.nginx.org/Pitfalls
# http://wiki.nginx.org/QuickStart
# http://wiki.nginx.org/Configuration
#
# Generally, you will want to move this file somewhere, and start with a clean
# file but keep this around for reference. Or just disable in sites-enabled.
#
# Please see /usr/share/doc/nginx-doc/examples/ for more detailed examples.
##

# Default server configuration
#
server {
        listen 80 default_server;
        listen [::]:80 default_server;

        # SSL configuration
        #
        # listen 443 ssl default_server;
        # listen [::]:443 ssl default_server;
        #
        # Note: You should disable gzip for SSL traffic.
        # See: https://bugs.debian.org/773332
        #
        # Read up on ssl_ciphers to ensure a secure configuration.
        # See: https://bugs.debian.org/765782
        #
        # Self signed certs generated by the ssl-cert package
        # Don't use them in a production server!
        #
        # include snippets/snakeoil.conf;

        root /var/www/html;

        # Add index.php to the list if you are using PHP
        index index.html index.htm index.nginx-debian.html;

        server_name _;

        location / {
                # First attempt to serve request as file, then
                # as directory, then fall back to displaying a 404.
                try_files $uri $uri/ =404;
        }

        # pass the PHP scripts to FastCGI server listening on 127.0.0.1:9000
        #
        #location ~ \.php$ {
        #       include snippets/fastcgi-php.conf;
        #
        #       # With php5-cgi alone:
        #       fastcgi_pass 127.0.0.1:9000;
        #       # With php5-fpm:
        #       fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php5-fpm.sock;
        #}
        # deny access to .htaccess files, if Apache's document root
        # concurs with nginx's one
        #
        #location ~ /\.ht {
        #       deny all;
        #}
}

# Virtual Host configuration for example.com
#
# You can move that to a different file under sites-available/ and symlink that
# to sites-enabled/ to enable it.
#

#server {

#       listen 80;
#       listen [::]:80;
#
#       server_name example.com;
#
#       root /var/www/example.com;
#       index index.html;
#
#       location / {
#               try_files $uri $uri/ =404;
#       }
#}

@julian these are the errors i got

/etc/nginx/sites-available$ sudo nginx -t
nginx: [emerg] unknown directive "erver" in /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/default:1
nginx: configuration file /etc/nginx/nginx.conf test failed

I used sudo apt-get install nginx

nginx version is 1.8.0-1

Operating system is Ubuntu 14.04 x64

I got this error line

ln: failed to create symbolic link ‘./domainname.com’: File exists (possibly because I've created this file before, with the same content)

I did sudo service nginx reload and got this message reload: Unknown instance:

So I tried start in place of reload, this message appeared nginx stop/pre-start, process 7332

Yet my domain is not up.

http://domainname.com:4567 worked

but http://domainname.com returned an error page.

@julian

I've reactivated all plugins on the new forum and everything still works.

I did the same thing on my old forum, reset all plugins then reactivated all of them and the problem is gone.

Perhaps the issue is in an old version of Vanilla or Lavender that was installed by default?

@julian

On the new forum, the active plugins were

dbsearch
markdown
mentions
soundpack default
rewards essentials
theme lavender
theme persona
theme vanilla
widget essentials

Yes it works after I've tried ./nodebb reset plugins

Now none of the plugins is active.

@julian

1. Operating system is Ubuntu (14.04 x 64) - on digitalocean
2. Version 0.7.0-dev and harsh is 50feb7a7663636407ea52da5ff28a9102919a214
3. Theme: persona 0.1.30

@julian I've just installed nodebb on a new server and the same problem occurred

http://104.236.188.152:4567/