You could use NGINX as a load balance/proxy server with SSL termination.

https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-set-up-nginx-load-balancing-with-ssl-termination

I use this technique to issue and manage SSL traffic to the main domain with separate certificates/virtual hosts to sub.domains.

@tamburrinipietro89

Absolutely – to change the current server block to a sub-domain, you’d simply modify this line:

server_name www.mydomain.com;

You’d want to change www to the sub-domain you’re wanting to use, for example:

server_name mysub.mydomain.com;

or

server_name app.mydomain.com;

Once those changes are made, you’d setup a new server block for the main domain, install PHP and the packages that you require, setup the new home directory, etc.

NGINX relies on the PHP’s FPM package, so you’ll want to make sure that’s installed when you go to install your PHP packages.

I prefer to stick with the latest version of PHP, so when it comes to deploying PHP, I’ll add the repo to enable PHP 7.1.x using:

sudo add-apt-repository -y ppa:ondrej/php

Then:

apt-get update

No we can get PHP and PHP-FPM installed using:

apt-get install -y php7.1-cli php7.1-dev php7.1-fpm php7.1-bcmath php7.1-bz2 php7.1-common php7.1-curl php7.1-enchant php7.1-gd php7.1-gmp php7.1-imap php7.1-intl php7.1-json php7.1-mbstring php7.1-mysql php7.1-pspell php7.1-readline php7.1-recode php7.1-soap php7.1-sqlite3 php7.1-tidy php7.1-xml php7.1-xmlrpc php7.1-zip php7.1-opcache php7.1-xsl

Once PHP finishes installing, all that’s left to do is setup the server block. To get you started, we can use a standard server block as an example to build on:

server
{
    listen 80
    listen [::]:80;
    server_name mydomain.com www.mydomain.com;

    location / {
        try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php;
    }

    location ~ [^/]\.php(/|$) {
        fastcgi_pass 127.0.0.1:9000;
        fastcgi_index index.php;
        fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $request_filename;
        include fastcgi_params;
    }
}

The above uses TCP instead of sockets, and to continue using TCP, you’d need to modify the existing configuration file for PHP FPM located in:

/etc/php/7.1/fpm/pool.d/www.conf

and search for:

listen =

And replace the socket with:

127.0.0.1:9000

and restart NGINX as well as PHP-FPM.

@tamburrinipietro89

The issue, as noted in my previous response, is with this server block:

server {
    listen 80;
    listen [::]:80 default_server ipv6only=on;
    return 301 https://$host$request_uri;
}

You’re not specifying a server_name, thus it redirects any request to the first server block it finds. In your case, that’s your NodeJS application (this is how NGINX works by default, the first server block is going to get non-specific requests).

What you need to do is correct that server block and add another as you need two – one for each of the domains.

For example, for the NodeJS application:

server {
    listen 80;
    listen [::]:80;
    server_name app.mydomain.com;

    return 301 https://$host$request_uri;
}

server {
    listen 443 ssl http2;
    listen [::]:443 ssl http2;
    server_name app.mydomain.com;

    ssl_certificate /etc/letsencrypt/live/www.mydomain.com/fullchain.pem;
    ssl_certificate_key /etc/letsencrypt/live/www.mydomain.com/privkey.pem;

    include snippets/ssl-params.conf;

    location / {
        proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
        proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
        proxy_set_header X-NginX-Proxy true;
        proxy_pass http://localhost:5000/;
        proxy_ssl_session_reuse off;
        proxy_set_header Host $http_host;
        proxy_cache_bypass $http_upgrade;
        proxy_redirect off;
    }
}

Then for the PHP application:

server {
    listen 80;
    listen [::]:80;
    server_name mydomain.com www.mydomain.com;

    return 301 https://$host$request_uri;
}

server {
    listen 443 ssl http2;
    listen [::]:443 ssl http2;

    server_name mydomain.com www.mydomain.com;

    ssl_certificate /etc/letsencrypt/live/www.mydomain.com/fullchain.pem;
    ssl_certificate_key /etc/letsencrypt/live/www.mydomain.com/privkey.pem;

    location / {
        try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php;
    }

    location ~ [^/]\.php(/|$) {
        fastcgi_pass 127.0.0.1:9000;
        fastcgi_index index.php;
        fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $request_filename;
        include fastcgi_params;
    }
}

NGINX won’t allow you to have a general purpose port 80 redirect that just works on all domains, you have to set a redirect up for each domain you want to redirect requests on port 80 to 443.

Also note, that unless you setup your SSL certificate to work across:

mydomain.com
www.mydomain.com
app.mydomain.com

Then you’ll need to make sure you setup individual SSL Certificates and correct the paths to the SSL files, otherwise the certificates may show as invalid.