I had previously written an article about converting phpBB’s default htaccess rules to Nginx. Here I’ll share a full-blown Nginx configuration file for serving a phpBB forum.

This configuration file :

• Redirects www sub domain to the bare domain along with any parked domains.
• Prevents external access to files and directories like config.php, avatar upload directory, etc.
• Sets proper Expires header for images.

server {
    listen   [::]:80;
    server_name  www.domain.com parkeddomain.com *.parkeddomain.com;
    rewrite ^    http://domain.com$request_uri? permanent;
}

server {
    listen   [::]:80;
    server_name  domain.com;
    root   /var/www/domain.com;
    index  index.php index.html index.htm;
    access_log  /var/logs/domain.com.access.log;

    location ~ /(config\.php|common\.php|cache|files|images/avatars/upload|includes|store) {
        deny all;
        return 403;
    }

    location ~* \.(gif|jpe?g|png|css)$ {
        expires   30d;
    }

    location ~ \.php$ {
        try_files $uri =404;
        fastcgi_pass   unix:/tmp/php.socket;
        fastcgi_index  index.php;
        fastcgi_param  SCRIPT_FILENAME  $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
        include fastcgi_params;
    }
}