[Darth-Apple]

Here's a poll for the server admins out there. 

• Apache is good for compatibility. It is the most widely used web server in the world. It is installed on the vast majority of web hosts, and is the only web server software that is natively compatible with .htaccess files that are widely used by most PHP applications. 
  
• Nginx is FAR faster than Apache. The perforamance improvements are significant. Most corporate or large websites do extra work to convert their .htaccess files to nginx configurations to take advantage of Nginx's performance. 
  

Personally, I use nginx. Apache is good for compatibility, but is an absolute RAM hog in comparison. I've hosted an entire chat room host with about ~600 chat rooms (about 40 of which were active) on a tiny 512 MB VPS thanks to nginx. Makestation is also hosted on Nginx. 

It's a very noticeable improvement when RAM is an issue. .htaccess files (used mostly for SEO friendly URLs) don't work out of the box, however. These have to be manually converted to nginx configurations to enable good SEO.

Which do you prefer? Nginx for speed, or Apache for compatibility?

[Divya165]

You have shared great points but I'd like to share some points about Apache and Nginx

Apache

-Apache runs on all Unix-like systems such as Linux, BSD, etc. As well as totally supports Windows.
-Apache uses a multi-threaded approach to process client requests.
-Apache cannot handle multiple requests concurrently with heavy web traffic.

NGINX

-Nginx runs on modern Unix-like systems; however, it has limited support for Windows.
-Nginx follows an event-driven approach to serve client requests.
-Nginx can handle multiple client requests concurrently and efficiently with limited hardware resources.

[Thomas]

Lighttpd

[Thomas]

I'm using nginx as a reverse proxy on my raspberry pi

[SpookyZalost]

One thing I wish for is for nginx to have better compatibility with various forum software, it seems like setting up configurations can be a pain sometimes, especially when running multiple instances.

[s3_gunzel]

NGinX because of its reverse proxy capabilities over a network. Nothing to do with performance.

[Divya165]

Both Apache and Nginx are popular web servers, with Apache being the long-standing leader and Nginx known for its high concurrency and efficiency. Apache is suitable for handling complex sites with scripting languages, while Nginx excels in handling high traffic and static content, making them complementary choices depending on your specific requirements.