I am considering switching back to Apache from Nginx, as my web server of choice. The ability to add new functionality without recompiling is a big reason why. Apache or Nginx, pre-fork or MPM, PHP-FPM tcp socket or unix socket. Some of the decisions you have to make when you are trying to configure your web server to server PHP applications.
I have worked with Nginx at several different companies, and have had good results with it handeling large amount of traffic.
But.
It is not the most flexible web server in the world. I don’t always want to recompile my web server to add new features. Sometime you just want to “load” new modules to add new functionality. I miss the ease of adding or removing functionality to the web server.
I have not used Apache with PHP-FPM, only Nginx, which has worked well. If this works as well with Apache as it did with Nginx that will make this decision easy.
What do you think Nginx or Apache?
[I had this saved in my drafts folder since June 2012. I forgot to publish it]