Update: This article is updated for WordPress 3.5 multisite’s file-handling.
ee site create example.com --wpsubdir --wpsc
In this article, we will setup WordPress Multisite using subdomains with Nginx with added support for WP Super Cache Plugin.
If you haven’t created a WordPress Multisite network, please check this guide first.
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;
}
set $cache_uri $request_uri;
# POST requests and urls with a query string should always go to PHP
if ($request_method = POST) {
set $cache_uri 'NULL';
}
if ($query_string != "") {
set $cache_uri 'NULL';
}
# Don't cache uris containing the following segments
if ($request_uri ~* "(/wp-admin/|/xmlrpc.php|/wp-(app|cron|login|register|mail).php|wp-.*.php|/feed/|index.php|wp-comments-popup.php|wp-links-opml.php|wp-locations.php|sitemap(_index)?.xml|[a-z0-9_-]+-sitemap([0-9]+)?.xml)") {
set $cache_uri 'NULL';
}
# Don't use the cache for logged in users or recent commenters
if ($http_cookie ~* "comment_author|wordpress_[a-f0-9]+|wp-postpass|wordpress_logged_in") {
set $cache_uri 'NULL';
}
# Use cached or actual file if they exists, otherwise pass request to WordPress
location / {
try_files /wp-content/cache/supercache/$http_host/$cache_uri/index.html $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; }
}
WP Super Cache caching may conflict with plugins that uses query vars. WooCommerce is an example known plugin known to work with above configuration. Reason is following line:
try_files /wp-content/cache/supercache/$http_host/$cache_uri/index.html $uri $uri/ /index.php$args ;
Change it as follow if you run into issues:
try_files /wp-content/cache/supercache/$http_host/$cache_uri/index.html $uri $uri/ /index.php ;
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.