Installing Nginx on Debian 8 (Jessie) is quick and painless.

Prerequisites

• A Debian 8 server (Jessie) with root or sudo privileges
• An up-to-date package index:
  

sudo apt-get update

1. Installing Nginx from Debian’s Default Repositories

Debian 8 ships with Nginx 1.6.2 in its main repository. To install it:

sudo apt-get install nginx-full -y

This will pull in Nginx and all its core modules, giving you version 1.6.2 out of the box.

Once installation completes:

# Start Nginx
sudo systemctl start nginx

# Enable it to start on boot
sudo systemctl enable nginx

# Verify it’s running
sudo systemctl status nginx

Visit http://<your_server_ip>/ in a browser; you should see the default “Welcome to nginx!” landing page.

2. Installing a More Recent Nginx via Dotdeb

If you need a later Nginx release (for example, 1.12.x or newer), you can pull packages from the Dotdeb and Nginx.org repositories. Here’s a one-shot script to add both repositories, trust their GPG keys, and install:

# 1. Add Dotdeb and Nginx.org sources
sudo tee -a /etc/apt/sources.list <<EOF
deb http://packages.dotdeb.org jessie all
deb http://nginx.org/packages/mainline/debian/ jessie nginx
EOF

# 2. Import the signing keys
cd /tmp
wget http://www.dotdeb.org/dotdeb.gpg
sudo apt-key add dotdeb.gpg

wget http://nginx.org/keys/nginx_signing.key
sudo apt-key add nginx_signing.key

# 3. Update package lists and install
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install nginx-full -y

After this, you’ll have Nginx 1.12.2 (or whatever the current mainline version is).

Confirm the version:

nginx -v

3. Post-Installation Steps

1. Firewall configuration
   Ensure HTTP (80) and, if needed, HTTPS (443) are allowed through your firewall.
   sudo ufw allow 'Nginx Full'
2. Basic configuration test sudo nginx -t A successful output means your syntax is correct.
3. Reload on changes
   Whenever you tweak /etc/nginx/nginx.conf or any files in /etc/nginx/sites-available/, apply them with:

sudo systemctl reload nginx

Conclusion

You now have Nginx up and running on Debian 8—either the stable stock release or a more bleeding-edge version via Dotdeb. From here, you can:

• Configure virtual hosts in /etc/nginx/sites-available/
• Enable SSL/TLS via Let’s Encrypt
• Tune performance with worker processes, caching, and gzip compression

Enjoy the speed and flexibility of Nginx on Debian 8!

Installing PHP 8.3 on Debian 8 requires a bit more effort, as it’s not included in the default repositories. To get the latest PHP version, you can leverage third-party repositories such as ondrej/php, which provides up-to-date PHP packages for Debian and Ubuntu.

First, install the necessary prerequisites:

apt-get update
apt-get install -y apt-transport-https lsb-release ca-certificates curl

Next, add the ondrej/php PPA (Personal Package Archive) to your system:

curl -fsSL https://packages.sury.org/php/.gpg | sudo apt-key add -
echo "deb https://packages.sury.org/php/ $(lsb_release -sc) main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/php.list
apt-get update

Now, install PHP 8.3 and essential modules:

apt-get install -y php8.3 php8.3-fpm php8.3-mysql php8.3-xml php8.3-mbstring php8.3-curl

Once installed, enable the PHP 8.3-FPM service and restart Nginx to apply changes:

systemctl enable php8.3-fpm
systemctl restart php8.3-fpm
systemctl restart nginx

Verify your PHP version:

php -v

You should see PHP 8.3.x displayed, confirming the installation. Now, your server is equipped with the latest PHP version, ready to serve dynamic PHP websites with Nginx on Debian 8.