Very succinct answer! Thank you. I am still a bit confused as to what interface CGI exposes? Is it a way for a programming language to take a HTTP request? As in, PHP-FastCGI is an implementation in PHP of receiving the HTTP request as data, and then calling the appropriate handler in the application?

You are my hero. This is exactly the type of answer I was looking for.

Thanks for making the distinction between the 1 and 2 web server set-ups. I actually have a DO droplet and I was looking to move the application to Nginx + FPM just for learning purposes so that tutorial is helpful. I've also read some of the other tutorials on Nginx.

The way I learned how to setup a server without using a control panel of some kind is by diving right in.

At first I messed around on a local virtual machine running the same distro I planned to use.

In a few hours I had NGINX, PHP-FPM and Rails apps up and running on a server.

This is exactly the kind of resource I was looking for. Thank you. I hope he keeps making more tutorials because I am very interested in the other things on his About page. I'm still excited to see what other answers people have.