I have the following two server-blocks in my config-file in sites-available: server { listen 80; server_name www.mydomain.be; root /usr/share/nginx/html; index index.html index.htm; location / { try_files $uri $uri/ =404; } } server { listen 80; server_name sub.mydomain.be; root /usr/share/nginx/sub; index index.html index.htm; location / { try_files $uri $uri/ =404; } } I also created an A-record for both www.domain.be and sub.domain.be with the IP of my server as value. Yet, when I try to reload my nginx configuration with service nginx reload it fails. When I remove the second server-block, it reloads as expected. I know this topic is popular, and that there are loads of such [nginx][subdomain] questions here, but none of them seems to discuss explicitly how the following three things hang together: virtual hosts or server blocks in nginx (est. server_name matching) the effect of A-records on how nginx processes requests the need to add hosts to /etc/hosts Right now I have the impression that a lack of knowledge of this bigger picture, rather than specific knowledge of nginx configuration prevents me from making this work.