Simon Willison’s Weblog

Which web server suits Django best? Apache, Nginx or something else?

25th January 2011

My answer to Which web server suits Django best? Apache, Nginx or something else? on Quora

I’m still a big fan of a stripped down Apache+mod_wsgi running behind nginx.

Nginx handles static files, gzip, trickling to slow clients, load balancing and having a configuration language that’s actually pleasant to work with.

Apache just sits there serving up dynamic Python pages via mod_wsgi, using the shortest possible config.

The reason I like Apache for this is I don’t need to babysit the process at all, unlike if I was using FastCGI or running a separate Python app server.