WordPress + Nginx Minimal Configuration

Update: This article is updated for WordPress 3.5 multisite’s file-handling.

easyengine (ee) note: If you are using easyengine, you can accomplish everything in this article using following command:

ee site create example.com --wpsubdir

In today’s article, we will setup WordPress Multisite using Subdirectories. This is simplest mode of Multisite setup as it doesn’t have any external dependency on DNS records or server/network configuration.

If you haven’t created a WordPress-Multisite network yet, please check our guide here.

Nginx Config

Below is recommended Nginx configuration.

server {
        ##DM - uncomment following line for domain mapping  
        #listen 80 default_server;
    server_name example.com *.example.com ;
    ##DM - uncomment following line for domain mapping
    #server_name_in_redirect off;

    access_log   /var/log/nginx/example.com.access.log;
    error_log    /var/log/nginx/example.com.error.log;

    root /var/www/example.com/htdocs;
    index index.php;

    if (!-e $request_filename) {
        rewrite /wp-admin$ $scheme://$host$uri/ permanent;  
        rewrite ^(/[^/]+)?(/wp-.*) $2 last;                     
        rewrite ^(/[^/]+)?(/.*\.php) $2 last;                   
    }

    location / {
        try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php?$args ;
    }

    location ~ \.php$ {
        try_files $uri =404;
        include fastcgi_params;
        fastcgi_pass 127.0.0.1:9000;
    }

    location ~* ^.+\.(ogg|ogv|svg|svgz|eot|otf|woff|mp4|ttf|rss|atom|jpg|jpeg|gif|png|ico|zip|tgz|gz|rar|bz2|doc|xls|exe|ppt|tar|mid|midi|wav|bmp|rtf)$ {
        access_log off; log_not_found off; expires max;
    }

    location = /robots.txt { access_log off; log_not_found off; }
    location ~ /\. { deny  all; access_log off; log_not_found off; }
}

Domain Mapping

You need to uncomment few lines in above nginx-config to get domain-mapping working. Apart from above config changes, you can read this guide to setup/configure domain-mapping.

Must Read:

Checklist For Perfect WordPress-Nginx Setup – It will help you verify if your caching will work after PHP/MySQL crash.
Nginx Maps for Better Static File Handling in WordPress-Multisite – useful for multisite created before WordPress 3.5 released
WordPress-Nginx tutorials

10 responses to “WordPress + Nginx Minimal Configuration”

Jeff Bordogna says:

January 30, 2013 at 2:14 am

Hey Rahul,
Thanks for your tutorials – they’ve been really helpful. However, I’m still having one issue with multisite/nginx configuration after using this tutorial. Basically, it seems like something’s wrong with pages that are within my subdirectory multsites. Going to the subdirectory (e.g. example.com/mydir) seems to work, but going further (e.g. example.com/mydir/post-1) does not. I asked the question on stackoverflow, with the specific domain, etc. to see the problem here: stackoverflow.com/questions/14590274/urls-of-a-wordpress-multisite-subdirectory-not-showing-up-correctly-with-nginx

Any help would be much appreciated!
Jeff Bordogna says:

January 30, 2013 at 8:04 am

I added a comment earlier today, but my config has since started working (I’m not really sure why…). Just wanted to send you a note to say that my previous comment (and this one) are not necessary to be approved.

Thanks again for the great tutorial!
- Rahul Bansal says:
  
  February 8, 2013 at 11:47 pm
  
  @Jeff
  
  Glad to know all is working at your end. 🙂
Florin says:

June 30, 2013 at 1:47 am

Hello, thank you for the guide, it was really helpful, however beyond a point I encountered some difficulties.

Basically I can’t get nginx to handle websites with the following siteurl:

localhost/wptest/site1

If I modify the siteurl after I create a new site in the network dashboard, it works though:

localhost/site2

I described the issue here, complete with error log: WordPress 3.5 Multisite and nginx

Your comment would be appreciated!

Thank you!
- Rahul Bansal says:
  
  June 30, 2013 at 1:51 am
  
  @Florin
  
  Try this – http://rtcamp.com/wordpress-nginx/tutorials/multisite/subdirectories/in-a-subdirectory/
  
  You just need to tweak few lines. Replace wordpress with wptest in that config
  - Florin says:
    
    July 2, 2013 at 11:05 pm
    
    Thanks Rahul,
    
    Much appreciated! As mentioned on stackoverflow this is working fine with 3.5
    
    Now I tried the same with 3.4.2, which also works, except when uploading files. And this is understandable because of the way /blogs.dir/ changed to /uploads/sites with 3.5.
    
    I tried changing the server block to accommodate for this, but right now I’m on a dead end. Any idea what I need to change to http://rtcamp.com/wordpress-nginx/tutorials/multisite/subdirectories/in-a-subdirectory/ ? Also, can you please reference to a good nginx configuration tutorial? All these server block recipes I find on the web are black boxes to me right now 🙂
    
    Thanks!
    Florin
Florin says:

July 2, 2013 at 11:10 pm

I forgot to mention the files are uploading to

blogs.dir/2/files/2013/07/

where /2/ is the id of the site, which is good, the mapping is not right and they are not showing on the site.
- Rahul Bansal says:
  
  July 3, 2013 at 2:38 pm
  
  Looks like you are using a WordPress which was installed before version 3.5.
  
  You need to add few more lines in your config as described here – http://rtcamp.com/wordpress-nginx/tutorials/multisite/static-files-handling/
Florin says:

July 3, 2013 at 6:09 pm

Indeed, as I mentioned, I am trying to set-up 3.4 as well. In fact, I am working on migrating 3.4 to 3.5 (not simply upgrading) and this is why I am setting up to different versions.

Now, I’ve seen that link and already had the two locations for blogs.dir and for ms-files. However with the second location, the one for ms-files, nginx doesn’t even start… Here’s how my server config looks now:

http://d.pr/i/wP7C

Thanks, again, for your support.