If you have a website and a single domain and a [Digital Ocean's](https://m.do.co/c/885fc9a6c5a4) droplet, and if you want to run the other website on a subdomain, then ****congratulations,**** you are at the right place. I started my blog about 3 years ago using NodeJs, AngularJs, and a bunch of other technologies. I used Heroku free account to host it. But the bootup time for a free account in Heroku is so long that it used to annoy me, let alone the visitors on my site. So I shifted my blog on [Digital Ocean](https://m.do.co/c/885fc9a6c5a4), and the load time reduced drastically, and ****now my users are happy**** (That's what I hope they are). But the problem came when I wanted to run my other projects on the same domain and on the same [Digital ocean](https://m.do.co/c/885fc9a6c5a4) account (means on the same Droplet. Who wants to pay more, to test things up.) ## Prerequisites * [Digital Ocean Droplet](https://m.do.co/c/885fc9a6c5a4): If you don't have a Digital Ocean account, [register from here](https://m.do.co/c/885fc9a6c5a4) and get ****$100 in cloud credits****. * You will also need a domain name. You can get it from Godaddy or Namecheap. * We will use Nginx for our reverse proxy. Make sure you have [installed that on your Droplet](https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-install-nginx-on-ubuntu-16-04). * Since this tutorial is for running your second Website on Nginx, make sure your first website is working fine. (Check out [this](https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-set-up-a-node-js-application-for-production-on-ubuntu-16-04) article for installing and running your Node app.) We will use [`example.com`](http://example.com/) for the demo, make sure to update this with your website name. First of all, we need to create a subdomain of our domain name. To do that, go to the DNS control panel of your domain name provider. There you have to create an ****"A record"**** for your subdomain. We will name this _A record_ as `subdomain`so that we will have a subdomain as [`subdomain.example.com`](http://subdomain.example.com/). It should ****point**** to the IP address of your domain (eg. `145.87.XX.XX`). This way, you are setting as the destination for the host Check out the tutorial to create an ****A record**** in [Godaddy](https://in.godaddy.com/help/create-a-subdomain-4080) or [Namecheap](https://www.namecheap.com/support/knowledgebase/article.aspx/9776/2237/how-to-create-a-subdomain-for-my-domain). Log into your Droplet using [Putty](https://www.digitalocean.com/docs/droplets/how-to/connect-with-ssh/).

If you have followed all the prerequisites, you must have a folder with the same name as your domain at a location `/var/www/example.com` here you will find all the files used to build your website. We will create a new directory (or a folder) at `/var/www/` by typing `cd /var/www/` the `sudo mkdir` [`subdomain.example.com`](http://subdomain.example.com/) (provide password whenever asked by console) to create a new folder. After that, if you have a Node app, copy the files there and start the application or if you have a static website, copy the files into [`subdomain.example.com`](http://subdomain.example.com/) the folder. > ****For Node App****: If you have a NodeJs app copy your files at `/var/www/subdomain.example.com` using [Filezilla](https://filezilla-project.org/). Use `npm start` or `pm2 start` (I recommend using [PM2 to run apps on droplet](https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-use-pm2-to-setup-a-node-js-production-environment-on-an-ubuntu-vps)) to start your node apps. Let's say your app starts running on port `3000`. Then type `sudo ufw allow 3000` because we need to set permission to allow port `3000` to be accessed by outsite world. To check that go to `[example.com](http://example.com/):3000` and check if it is running correctly. ## or > ****For Static webpages****: If you want to server a static website copy your files at `/var/www/subdomain.example.com` using [Filezilla](https://filezilla-project.org/). Make sure you have an `index.html` at `/var/www/subdomain.example.com` folder. This is the page which will get rendered on hitting `[subdomain.example.com](http://subdomain.example.com/)`. Now we will set a new server block in Nginx to call our new app. Goto, `/etc/nginx/sites-available/` here we will create a new file by typing `sudo vi` [`subdomain.example.com`](http://subdomain.example.com/) then press "i" to get into document edit mode. Type the following code: ****For Node App****: ``` server { listen 80; listen [::]:80; root /var/www/subdomain.example.com; index index.html index.htm index.nginx-debian.html; server_name subdomain.example.com; location / { proxy_pass http://localhost:3000; proxy_http_version 1.1; proxy_set_header Upgrade $http_upgrade; proxy_set_header Connection 'upgrade'; proxy_set_header Host $host; proxy_cache_bypass $http_upgrade; } } ``` ## or ****For Static webpages**** ``` server { listen 80; root /var/www/subdomain.example.com; index index.html index.htm index.nginx-debian.html; server_name subdomain.example.com www.subdomain.example.com; location / { try_files $uri $uri/ =404; } } ``` Press `Esc` then `:wq` to save and exit the file. Now you need to enable the configuration, make a symlink to the enabled sites: ``` ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/subdomain.example.com /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/subdomain.example.com ``` To check the syntax of code in the server block is correct: ``` sudo nginx -t ``` You will see a success message if the syntax used in the server file is correct. To restart the Nginx server: ``` sudo systemctl restart nginx ``` If everything works fine, you will be able to see your new website at [`subdomain.example.com`](http://subdomain.example.com/). If it works for you, comment "****Hell yes!****" otherwise mention any issue you faced.

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