Installing PHP and Configuring Nginx to Use the PHP Processor

Nginx does not contain native PHP processing like some other web servers, install php-fpm, which mean for "fastCGI process manager". Nginx to pass PHP requests to this software for processing.

Install the php-fpm module along with an additional helper package for mysql database server php-mysql, which will allow PHP to communicate with your database backend. Do this by typing:
sudo apt install php-fpm, php-mysql

Add the following content, which was taken and slightly modified from the default server block configuration file, to your new server block configuration file: /etc/nginx/sites-available/default

server {
        listen 80;
        root /var/www/html;
        index index.php index.html index.htm index.nginx-debian.html;
        server_name test.com;

        location / {
                try_files $uri $uri/ =404;
        }

        location ~ \.php$ {
                include snippets/fastcgi-php.conf;
                fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php/php7.2-fpm.sock;
        }

        location ~ /\.ht {
                deny all;
        }
}

Test your new configuration file for syntax errors by typing:
sudo nginx -t

Reload Nginx to make the necessary changes:
sudo systemctl reload nginx

Creating a PHP File to Test Configuration

To do this, use your text editor to create a test PHP file called info.php in your document root:

sudo nano /var/www/html/info.php

This is valid PHP code that will return information about your server:

<?php
phpinfo();

Open URL : http://your_server_domain_or_IP/info.php