Instruction how to install and configure Nginx, PHP (with PHP-FPM) and MySql server.

sudo apt install mysql-server

Install Nginx and PHP related packages including PHP-FPM (FastCGI Process Manager).

sudo apt install nginx php5-fpm php5-mysql

Configure Nginx to pass .php files to FPM.

Add these lines somewhere in the server {} section (or uncomment as they are already in the file):

/etc/nginx/sites-enabled/default

location ~ \.php$ {
	fastcgi_split_path_info ^(.+\.php)(/.+)$;
	fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php5-fpm.sock;
	fastcgi_index index.php;
	include fastcgi_params;
}

Fix a security issue by configuring FPM.

More details here: http://wiki.nginx.org/Pitfalls#Passing_Uncontrolled_Requests_to_PHP)

Uncomment and modify this line:

/etc/php5/fpm/php.ini

 ;cgi.fix_pathinfo=1

so that it looks like this:

/etc/php5/fpm/php.ini

cgi.fix_pathinfo=0

/etc/init.d/php5-fpm restart

/etc/init.d/nginx start

Create a test PHP file in the Nginx document root, located in /usr/share/nginx/www by default.

echo "<?php phpinfo(); ?>" > /usr/share/nginx/www/info.php

Check if Nginx and FPM are configured correctly by loading this url:

http://{server}/info.php

If you see a PHP a list of PHP configurations everything is correctly configured.