Rewrite root address to a subdirectory in nginx

Question

I'm converting my mediawiki site to use nginx as a frontend for static files with apache on the backend for php. I've gotten everything working so far except for when I view the root directory "example.com" it tries to serve a directory listing and gives a 403 error since I have that disabled and don't have an index file there. The apache rewrite rule I have in place right now is simply: ``` RewriteRule ^$ /wiki/Main_Page [L] ``` I tried something similar with a location directive in nginx, but it's not working: ``` location = / { rewrite "^$" /wiki/Main_Page; } ``` The rest of my location directives are: ``` location / { try_files $uri $uri/ @rewrite; } location @rewrite { rewrite ^/wiki/(.*)$ /w/index.php?title=$1&$args; } location ~* \.(js|css|png|jpg|jpeg|gif|ico)$ { try_files $uri /w/index.php?title=$1&$args; expires max; log_not_found off; } location ~ \.php?$ { proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr; proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $remote_addr; proxy_set_header Host $host; p…

Accepted Answer

I found help in the nginx irc chat.

Basically what I needed to do was use a return instead of rewrite. So I changed this:

```
location = / {
    rewrite "^$" /wiki/Main_Page;
}
```

to this:

```
location = / {
    return 301 http://www.example.com/wiki/Main_Page;
}
```

Rewrite root address to a subdirectory in nginx

Solution

Problem