[3.3.x] Support Forum • Re: Possible to Install / Use without Nginx / .htaccess rewrites?

From where I'm sitting, your webserver/PHP configuration is set up to throw a 404 when it should instead be loading the app.php script and allowing phpBB to parse/use the PATH_INFO information. In fact, your site should be able to recognize app.php/install with no rewrite rules whatsoever. That's standard behavior for a modern, correctly-configured webserver and PHP. I use Apache/PHP-FPM with no .htaccess files or system/global rewrite rules for phpBB, and I have never experienced a problem with app.php/whatever URLs.

Check the value of cgi.fix_pathinfo in php.ini, and if it's not the default of "1" or "on", PHP is incorrectly configured to recognize the URL. Also note the various fastcgi directives in the configuration posted by noxwizard; I believe they tell nginx to correctly configure the PATH_INFO environment variable.

FYI, your nginx configuration is by no means "standard WordPress". The official WordPress documention for nginx lists configurations quite different than the one you referenced, which (in my admittedly-limited knowledge of nginx) seems to be an emulation of the antiquated Apache "prefork" MPM with PHP loaded a DSO. Modern Apache webservers use the "event" MPM, with PHP (in most cases PHP-FPM) configured for FastCGI.

Once you clean up your nginx and/or PHP configuration, I'm sure your site will correctly parse the app.php/whatever URLs without the need for rewrite directives.

(Back into the shadows)

Statistics: Posted by DionDesigns — Fri Apr 25, 2025 6:32 pm

---