Live data from Hacker News

Nginx reaches 33.3% web server market share while Apache falls below 50%

w3techs.com

51–60 of 190 posts

Re: Nginx reaches 33.3% web server market share while Apache falls below 50%

#51
post #30

This is kind of a weird statistic to try to analyze. So many uses of nginx are just the act of putting an Apache/IIS/etc site behind nginx, so technically, both servers still have market share but you only see nginx. It's just that nginx makes it so easy to do certain things, like supporting modern HTTPS, that you might as well add it to your stack rather than replace something.

HA Proxy would be a better choice if the only goal is reverse proxying to another web sever; nginx excels at static files, uwsgi, stuff like that. Even the commercial/paid nginx Plus only comes close to what's already built into ha-proxy, which is totally open source.

Re: Nginx reaches 33.3% web server market share while Apache falls below 50%

#52
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

XML should NEVER be used for configuration, not even if you're a Java or C# framework/middleware/application server.

Honestly, I think the statement, 'XML should NEVER be used, period,' is true as well: for any use case I can imagine there are superior alternatives to XML. Even if you have to interface with other services using XML, just use SXML ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SXML ) in your own code and marshal to XML at the very last instant. Ultimately, XML was a colossal mistake carried out to perfection.

SGML and XML were invented as a meta-language for encoding semistructured text such as HTML with plain text editor programs, and excels in that use case like nothing else. That XML is abused as config language, payload meta-syntax for web services, for encoding component models, and even as meta-syntax for programming languages is hardly SGML/XML's fault.

Re: Nginx reaches 33.3% web server market share while Apache falls below 50%

#53
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People do that? And it's widespread? I've never heard of this.

This must be the single most common use of nginx, I'm totally blown away that someone as prolific as you has never heard of it.

No, the most common use of nginx is to put it in front of rails/play/jee/whatever framework that doesn't ship with a full featured web server.

Re: Nginx reaches 33.3% web server market share while Apache falls below 50%

#54
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.nginx.com/resources/admin-guide/reverse-proxy/

I know you can reverse proxy, but I haven't heard of anyone reverse proxying to apache.

That was the original way (at least the most common way) to do CGI. Nginx as a reverse proxy / load balancer / SSL terminator / static file server pointing to a backend running apache for mod_cgi or mod_fastcgi. And a lot of people would have both web servers running on the same server. You already have a web server, why do you need two?! Just pick one!

Re: Nginx reaches 33.3% web server market share while Apache falls below 50%

#55
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.nginx.com/resources/admin-guide/reverse-proxy/

I know you can reverse proxy, but I haven't heard of anyone reverse proxying to apache.

Webfaction has been doing it that way since roughly 2008, initially introduced as a way to speed up serving of static files.

https://blog.webfaction.com/2008/12/a-little-holiday-present...

Re: Nginx reaches 33.3% web server market share while Apache falls below 50%

#56
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know you can reverse proxy, but I haven't heard of anyone reverse proxying to apache.

That was the original way (at least the most common way) to do CGI. Nginx as a reverse proxy / load balancer / SSL terminator / static file server pointing to a backend running apache for mod_cgi or mod_fastcgi. And a lot of people would have both web servers running on the same server. You already have a web server, why do you need two?! Just pick one!

Reverse proxying to Apache is still how I run my Perl CGI scripts. I'm not sure of a better way to do it that supports running multiple scripts.

Re: Nginx reaches 33.3% web server market share while Apache falls below 50%

#57
post #31

How much of nginx's growth is, do you think, due to it being "better" than Apache httpd (which it isn't, BTW. Apache 2.4 is easily as fast and scalable as nginx), compared to either (1) The aggressive sales and marketing of NGINX the company or (2) nginx fronting Apache httpd and thus "hiding" the growth of Apache httpd usage. But there are lots of Apache httpd haters, for some reason, and so they LOVE promoting the…

I started needing to configure web stuff about 6 or 7 years ago. At the time, I could use nginx or Apache. I spent a bit of time (maybe 20 minutes) with Apache since I'd heard of it, thought "Ugh this is a pain and I just want to move on to the fun parts of this project and not banal config details", and then tried nginx. It was much easier, and I've never bothered to learn Apache. To be honest I've kind of assumed it wasn't worth learning since it seems to be in slow, but persistent, decline, and I've never needed to learn it for a particular project.

I wonder if anyone else had a similar experience. If the first 20 minutes are nicer with one tool over the other, I suspect most people will stick with that tool until it starts limiting them.

I don't think any of the stuff you mention is related to that.

Re: Nginx reaches 33.3% web server market share while Apache falls below 50%

#59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never seen SXML before, but that looks way worse. All of Lisp's frustration of trying to match closing parens with none of Lisp's power.

As opposed to closing tags? All decent text editors have matching parens highlighting. SXML is much easier to parse and it's more concise.

HTML itself allows SGML-style tag omission since HTML was originally an application of SGML. A simple example can be found at [1], and can also be seen in action in my talk slides linked from [2].

[1] http://sgmljs.net/docs/html5.html#tag-omission-on-document-l...

[2] http://sgmljs.net/blog/blog1701.html

Re: Nginx reaches 33.3% web server market share while Apache falls below 50%

#60
post #30

This is kind of a weird statistic to try to analyze. So many uses of nginx are just the act of putting an Apache/IIS/etc site behind nginx, so technically, both servers still have market share but you only see nginx. It's just that nginx makes it so easy to do certain things, like supporting modern HTTPS, that you might as well add it to your stack rather than replace something.

As someone younger who never really used Apache, I don't see any reason to do anything with it instead of Nginx. Other than supporting "legacy" setups, whats the point of Nginx load balancing Apache? Configuring nginx is just so much more intuitive.
Post reply on HN