Install Nginx in server

sudo apt-get install nginx

Deploy rails code to server

The simplest way is to do it via github; git push your local changes and in the server, do

git pull origin master

then install dependency

bundle install

then run migration

bundle exec rake db:migrate assets:precompile

Add nginx config file

There are two folders under /etc/nginx/, site-availables and site-enabled.

There is a default config file inside /etc/nginx/site-availables/ folder, you can use it as a template but I always create a new configure file call it web or whatever you want, here is one example.

upstream app {
    # Path to Unicorn SOCK file, as defined previously
    server unix:/PATH_TO_RAILS_ROOT/shared/sockets/unicorn.sock fail_timeout=0;
}

server {
    server_name SERVER_NAME; # change to your own example.com

    root /PATH_TO_RAILS_ROOT/public;

    try_files $uri/index.html $uri @app; # reverse proxy to rails socket

    location @app {
        proxy_pass http://app;
        proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
        proxy_set_header  Host $host;
        proxy_set_header  X-Forwarded-Proto $scheme;
        proxy_set_header  X-Forwarded-Ssl on; # Optional
        proxy_set_header  X-Forwarded-Port $server_port;
        proxy_set_header  X-Forwarded-Host $host;
        proxy_redirect off;
    }

    error_page 500 502 503 504 /500.html;
    client_max_body_size 4G;
    keepalive_timeout 10;

    # configure for tsl ...
}

Now /etc/nginx/site-avaibales/web is ready, to enable it, just create a softlink pointing to /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/web

sudo ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/web /etc/nginx/sites-enabled

then restart nginx services

sudo service nginx restart

Setup ssl with Let’s Encrypt

Official doc