for me the reason to stay with an apache/mod_php backend was very bad experience I had with fastcgi back in the 2006/2007 area where I was using a lighttpd/fastcgi configuration.
I've seen crashes in lighty, crashes in fastcgi and subtle differences in behavior between fastcgi and mod_php.
FastCGI just wasn't a commonly used method of deployment back then, so there were for sure some bugs around that I didn't have time or interest to fix.
By now, there's PHP-FPM and fastcgi is much more common, so you could probably just hook php directly into nginx by now, but I didn't want to do experiments and I knew that apache worked, so that's what I used.
Just remember to turn off keep-alive in apache, btw.
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for me the reason to stay with an apache/mod_php backend was very bad experience I had with fastcgi back in the 2006/2007 area where I was using a lighttpd/fastcgi configuration.
I've seen crashes in lighty, crashes in fastcgi and subtle differences in behavior between fastcgi and mod_php.
FastCGI just wasn't a commonly used method of deployment back then, so there were for sure some bugs around that I didn't have time or interest to fix.
By now, there's PHP-FPM and fastcgi is much more common, so you could probably just hook php directly into nginx by now, but I didn't want to do experiments and I knew that apache worked, so that's what I used.
Just remember to turn off keep-alive in apache, btw.
There was a bit of chatter recently about ill-configured nginx-fastcgi servers having a php vulnerability. Seems to be summed up here:
https://nealpoole.com/blog/2011/04/setting-up-php-fastcgi-an...
Thanks for the keep-alive tip. I missed that one.
EDIT: I see that the author of the post I linked replied below- also with the link.
I use nginx with PHP-FPM on multiple sites and have been quite happy with the results.
I'd say it's fairly stable, as (IIRC) WordPress.com is all run off nginx.