NGINX rewriting rule for getting clean URL

Question

What would be the nginx rewrite rule to redirect my wordpress permalink structure from /%category%/%postname%/ to /%postname%/?

Solution

In summary, you need to let NGINX know that if that file doesn't exist, to not throw a 404 error, but rather call index.php. Wordpress is smart enough to parse the URL as parameters, and serve the correct page.

Add this snippet in your server configuration block:

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

Here is a complete example from nginx.org:

# Upstream to abstract backend connection(s) for php
upstream php {
        server unix:/tmp/php-cgi.socket;
        server 127.0.0.1:9000;
}

server {
        ## Your website name goes here.
        server_name domain.tld;
        ## Your only path reference.
        root /var/www/wordpress;
        ## This should be in your http block and if it is, it's not needed here.
        index index.php;

        location = /favicon.ico {
                log_not_found off;
                access_log off;
        }

        location = /robots.txt {
                allow all;
                log_not_found off;
                access_log off;
        }

        location / {
                # This is cool because no php is touched for static content.
                # include the "?$args" part so non-default permalinks doesn't break when using query string
                try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php?$args;
        }

        location ~ \.php$ {
                #NOTE: You should have "cgi.fix_pathinfo = 0;" in php.ini
                include fastcgi.conf;
                fastcgi_intercept_errors on;
                fastcgi_pass php;
        }

        location ~* \.(js|css|png|jpg|jpeg|gif|ico)$ {
                expires max;
                log_not_found off;
        }
}

Comments

[rsfinn]

Note that "non-default permalinks" includes category links as well. In my initial setup this line read try_files $uri $uri/ =404; replacing =404 with /index.php?$args was the necessary step to getting my category links working again.