My [Nginx][nginx] and [Wordpress][wp] configuration on [Debian Linux 5 (Lenny)][debian]. This has Nginx as the Web server using the fastcgi module to talk to php-cgi processes that run WordPress with pretty URLs.

The virtual private server I installed this on (from [John Companies][jc]) has a 256 megabyte slice, so I figured a regular Apache + mod_php setup might be in trouble seeing as one of the sites I am running gets several thousand visits a day. Up to now I have always used Apache with mod_php to run WordPress, and anyway it is fun to learn how unfamiliar software works ([Lotus Notes][notes] excepted).

On a side note, [SysV run-levels][sysv] and /etc/rcX.d directories are needlessly clever. [sysv-rc-conf][sysvrcconf] makes editing those easy.

server {
listen 80;
server_name example.com;

root /home/david/example.com;
index index.php index.html index.htm;
error_page 500 502 503 504 /50x.html;

location / {

}

location = /50x.html {
root /var/www/nginx-default;
}

# deny access to .htaccess files, if Apache’s document root
# concurs with nginx’s one
location ~ /\.ht {
deny all;
}

location /b/ {
if (!-e $request_filename) {
rewrite ^(.+)$ /b/index.php?q=$1 last;
}
}

location ~ \.php$ {
fastcgi_pass 127.0.0.1:9000;
fastcgi_index index.php;
include fastcgi_params;
fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
}
}

# Rewrite www.example.com to example.com
server {
listen 80;
server_name www.example.com;
rewrite ^ http://example.com$request_uri?;
}

This configuration is for WordPress installed under http://example.com/b/ on my server.

[nginx]: http://nginx.org/
[wp]: http://wordpress.org/
[jc]: http://www.johncompanies.com/
[notes]: http://www.ibm.com/software/lotus/products/notes/
[sysvrcconf]: http://sysv-rc-conf.sourceforge.net/
[sysv]: http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/linux/RHL-9-Manual/ref-guide/s1-boot-init-shutdown-sysv.html
[debian]: http://wiki.debian.org/DebianLenny