Changing permalinks gives me 404 errors on nginx

Question

EDIT

It turns out that I was barking up the wrong tree trying to edit .htaccess, as nginx doesn't use it. What I apparently need to do is edit my .conf file. Before I read this, my_app.conf looked like this:

upstream backend {
    server unix:/u/apps/my_app/tmp/php.sock;
}

server {

    listen 80 default;
    root /u/apps/my_app/www;
    index index.php;

    access_log /u/apps/my_app/logs/access.log;
    error_log /u/apps/my_app/logs/error.log;

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

    # This location block matches anything ending in .php and sends it to
    # our PHP-FPM socket, defined in the upstream block above.
    location ~ \.php$ {
        try_files $uri =404;
        fastcgi_pass backend;
        fastcgi_index index.php;
        fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME /u/apps/my_app/www$fastcgi_script_name;
        include fastcgi_params;
    }

    # This location block is used to view PHP-FPM stats
    location ~ ^/(php_status|php_ping)$ {
        fastcgi_pass backend;
        fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $fastcgi_script_name;
        include fastcgi_params;
        allow 127.0.0.1;
        deny all;
    }

    # This location block is used to view nginx stats
    location /nginx_status {
        stub_status on;
        access_log off;
        allow 127.0.0.1;
        deny all;
    }
}

Now it looks like this, and it's still not working:

upstream backend {
    server unix:/u/apps/my_app/tmp/php.sock;
}

server {

    listen 80 default;
    root /u/apps/my_app/www;
    index index.php;

    access_log /u/apps/my_app/logs/access.log;
    error_log /u/apps/my_app/logs/error.log;

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

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

    rewrite /wp-admin$ $scheme://$host$uri/ permanent;

    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;
    }

    # Uncomment one of the lines below for the appropriate caching plugin (if used).
    #include global/wordpress-wp-super-cache.conf;
    #include global/wordpress-w3-total-cache.conf;

    # This location block matches anything ending in .php and sends it to
    # our PHP-FPM socket, defined in the upstream block above.
    location ~ \.php$ {
        try_files $uri =404;
        fastcgi_pass backend;
        fastcgi_index index.php;
        fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME /u/apps/my_app/www$fastcgi_script_name;
        include fastcgi_params;
    }

    # This location block is used to view PHP-FPM stats
    location ~ ^/(php_status|php_ping)$ {
        fastcgi_pass backend;
        fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $fastcgi_script_name;
        include fastcgi_params;
        allow 127.0.0.1;
        deny all;
    }

    # This location block is used to view nginx stats
    location /nginx_status {
        stub_status on;
        access_log off;
        allow 127.0.0.1;
        deny all;
    }
}

Anyone know what I'm doing wrong?

END EDIT

I have changed my permalinks from the default to /%postname%/, and now the links within WordPress's Admin panel give me 404 errors - Not WordPress 404 pages, nginx 404 pages. Looking up why this is told me that this should be editing my .htaccess file or telling me WordPress can't rewrite .htaccess - the .htaccess file is nonexistant, and WordPress isn't giving any errors when I change permalinks.

I've tried creating a blank .htaccess file in my wordpress folder, giving it 666 permissions, changing the user and group to www-data and then changing the permalinks- that didn't work. I then changed it to this before changing the permalinks:

# BEGIN WordPress
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule ^index\.php$ - [L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
</IfModule>
# END WordPress

When that didn't work, I changed RewriteBase to /wordpress/ before changing permalinks again - still nothing.

I've also gone into my site's .conf file and changed try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php; to the following, restarting nginx and php5-fpm each time;

try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php?$query_string;

try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php?q=$request_uri;

try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php?$args;

I'm running a home server with nginx. Any ideas about what's going on here?

Answer 1

Those are Apache .htaccess rewrite rules, but you have stated that you are on an Nginx server. Nginx does not use an .htaccess-like directory level file, much less does it use the .htaccess file itself.. You need to edit the server configuration itself. The Codex has a detail sample:

# WordPress single blog rules.
# Designed to be included in any server {} block.

# This order might seem weird - this is attempted to match last if rules below fail.
# http://wiki.nginx.org/HttpCoreModule
location / {
    try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php?$args;
}

# Add trailing slash to */wp-admin requests.
rewrite /wp-admin$ $scheme://$host$uri/ permanent;

# Directives to send expires headers and turn off 404 error logging.
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;
}

# Uncomment one of the lines below for the appropriate caching plugin (if used).
#include global/wordpress-wp-super-cache.conf;
#include global/wordpress-w3-total-cache.conf;

# Pass all .php files onto a php-fpm/php-fcgi server.
location ~ [^/]\.php(/|$) {
    fastcgi_split_path_info ^(.+?\.php)(/.*)$;
    if (!-f $document_root$fastcgi_script_name) {
        return 404;
    }
    # This is a robust solution for path info security issue and works with "cgi.fix_pathinfo = 1" in /etc/php.ini (default)

    include fastcgi.conf;
    fastcgi_index index.php;
#   fastcgi_intercept_errors on;
    fastcgi_pass php;
}

Answer 2

I'm using wordpress multisite with custom permalink setting: /%category%/%postname%/

/etc/nginx/site-available/domain.conf

On server{

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

If your root wordpress is not the webroot but http://domain.com/wordpress/:

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

If you are using old wordpress with blogs.dir, add: location ^~ /blogs.dir { internal; alias /var/www/wordpress/wp-content/blogs.dir; access_log off; log_not_found off; expires max; }

Check the nginx configuration: sudo nginx -t

Reload nginx: sudo service nginx reload

Also try change permalink settings.

Answer 3

Had to add this piece of code to both the /sites-available/your-settings-file and /sites-enabled/your-settings-file:

server {
[...]

if (!-e $request_filename) {
    rewrite ^.*$ /index.php last;
}

[...]
}

It's working for me now.

Answer 4

I had to set the root path to wordpressś installed directory: root /var/www/html/wp;

I dont like it because I have more applications installed on this machine but creating more virtual hosts should be enough.

Answer 5

Step 1. Edit /etc/nginx/site-available/example.com

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

step 2 : login to server step 3. Run this

ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/example.com /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/example.com

step 4. Test configuration

sudo nginx -t

step 5. Restart Nginx server

sudo systemctl restart nginx

step 6. Save the permalink from wordpress admin dashboard ***** Happy browsing ****

More details http://toihid.com/wordpress-permalink-in-nginx-server/

Answer 6

@Angelo's answer solved the issue for me. I'd upvote but lack reputation so posting an answer.

Just for Clarity the following

server {
        server_name xxx.xxxx.com;
        
        root /var/www/wordpress;

        listen 80;
        listen [::]:80;

        index index.php;

        location / {
                try_files $uri $uri/ =404;
        }

        location ~ \.php$ {
        include snippets/fastcgi-php.conf;
        fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php/php8.1-fpm.sock;
        }
}

became

server {
        server_name xxx.xxxx.com;
        
        root /var/www/wordpress;

        listen 80;
        listen [::]:80;

        index index.php;

        location / {
                try_files $uri $uri/ =404;
        }

        if (!-e $request_filename) {
                rewrite ^.*$ /index.php last;
        }

        location ~ \.php$ {
        include snippets/fastcgi-php.conf;
        fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php/php8.1-fpm.sock;
        }
}

Notice the extra

        if (!-e $request_filename) {
                rewrite ^.*$ /index.php last;
        }