What is NGINX and How Can It Improve WooCommerce Performance?

eCommerce stores based on WooCommerce Plugin need to deliver lightning-fast performance to the customers in terms of time-to-first-byte and full-page load time. An estimated 53% of clients using mobile devices are lost if your online store site takes longer than 3 seconds to upload!!


Speed is money; the faster your site loads, the better the user experience and improved SEO with higher ROI. Therefore, always choose Managed WooCommerce Hosting with the latest technology and lightweight Tech Stack. Your website hosting provider plays the most important role in your eStore's success because performance and security are in their hands which are the most critical aspects of your eStore 


Suppose you are running a high-traffic WooCommerce store with many readers. In that case, you need a web server like NGINX to handle this traffic while using lesser computing resources than its competitors like Apache. This article covers the workings of NGINX that speed up your website performance.


What is NGINX and How Does It Work?


NGINX has been the most popular web server for years. Two widely used web servers are Apache & NGINX, used for Php-based CMS like WooCommerce in the hosting industry and developer community. It is a lightweight and open-source HTTP server plus a reverse-proxy server. Acting as an intermediary between your webpage and visitors, this reverse web server can serve multiple purposes like serving static content faster or improving the security of your site via rate limiting. 


This fast and lightweight Linux-based web server works with backend APIs and is ideal for applications like WordPress and Magento. It processes multiple requests simultaneously and quickly. Depending on NGINX's configuration file, some requests are directly processed by it, while others go through different programs and software services. The configuration file for NGINX contains all relevant instructions for various situations like telling it to look for static content such as the HTML files, telling it where to send requests that are to be processed by other programs/ servers, etc. 

How Does NGINX Improve your WordPress WooCommerce Performance?


NGINX is designed to process connections by default in a single thread instead of spawning multiple threads for every request. This implies it can handle thousands of such connections simultaneously without consuming higher memory compared to other servers like Apache. 


Its lightning-fast performance, low resource usage, and stability make it a popular choice among several top brands that use NGINX to power their websites. 


The duality of being a web server and a reverse proxy enables NGINX to be used for directing users to backend systems on different ports. This server can be used for actions like serving static content, such as images at a particular location and dynamic content like PHP-generated HTML pages from another.


In contrast to its peers like Apache, NGiNX is an asynchronous web server than handles processes concurrently instead of sequentially. A single thread of NGINX can handle several requests simultaneously, and it does not have to wait for each request to finish before moving on to the next one. This results in quicker response times and drastically improved efficiency. 


NGINX consumes lesser memory while delivering optimum performance even under heavy loads with no requests in line waiting to be processed. 


It also has a smaller memory footprint because no new threads are required for individual requests. Its event-driven system only uses a thread when it is absolutely necessary, while the rest of the functionality is placed in a non-blocking event loop, a.k.a asynchronous programming. 

Why is NGINX Ideal for your Woocommerce Site?


Many hosting providers recommend Apache and by default, they use Apache web server due to its compatibility and ease of use. WooCommerce can be hosted on an NGINX web server without needing Apache. 


NGINX is ideal for your website because it gives you all the features of Apache plus handles multiple requests simultaneously and serves static content, which makes it outshines all competition. A typical WooCommerce page comprises static content LCSS, scripts, and images; NGINX could serve both a server and cache. NGINX is the far better option if you want high performance.

Wrap Up

Attracting customers into clicking that checkout button requires offering them a visit to a site that has the slightest bit of loading time and performs optimally across all types of browsers and devices. 


Of course, you'll need many things to develop and run an outstanding WooCommerce store. These include the WordPress CMS, WooCommerce Plugins, plugin and theme, the best resources, and the best Managed Cloud Hosting! Devrims Managed Cloud Hosting offers a one-click WooCommerce installation using an NGINX web server with the freedom to choose the software service as per your requirement. Two leading web servers – Apache and NGINX are used and Devrims provides both. By default, their system suggests NGINX, but you can change it as per the requirement. 


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