Mapping subdomains to URLs with nginx
ANSWER
After days of searching, tweaking, and configuring, I've gotten down the code needed to map subdomains to URLs exactly like in my example. Here is my vhost for example.com: https://gist.github.com/thomasgriffin/4733283
server { listen 80; listen 443 ssl; server_name ~^(?<user>[a-zA-Z0-9-]+)\.example\.com$; location / { resolver 8.8.8.8; rewrite ^([^.]*[^/])$ $1/ permanent; proxy_pass_header Set-Cookie; proxy_pass $scheme://example.com/user/$user$request_uri; }}server { listen 80; listen 443 ssl; server_name www.example.com; return 301 $scheme://example.com$request_uri;}server { listen 80; server_name example.com; access_log /var/www/example.com/logs/access.log; error_log /var/www/example.com/logs/error.log; root /var/www/example.com/public; index index.php; location / { try_files $uri $uri/ @wordpress /index.php?q=$request_uri; } location @wordpress { fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php5-fpm.sock; fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name; include /etc/nginx/fastcgi_params; fastcgi_param SCRIPT_NAME /index.php; } # Pass the PHP scripts to FastCGI server listening on UNIX sockets. # location ~ \.php$ { try_files $uri @wordpress; fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php5-fpm.sock; fastcgi_index index.php; fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name; include fastcgi_params; }}server { listen 443 ssl; ssl on; keepalive_timeout 70; server_name example.com; ssl_certificate ssl/example.com.chained.crt; ssl_certificate_key ssl/example.key; ssl_protocols SSLv3 TLSv1 TLSv1.1 TLSv1.2; ssl_ciphers HIGH:!aNULL:!MD5; ssl_session_cache shared:SSL:10m; ssl_session_timeout 10m; ssl_prefer_server_ciphers on; root /var/www/example.com/public; index index.php; location / { try_files $uri $uri/ @wordpress /index.php?q=$request_uri; } location @wordpress { fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php5-fpm.sock; fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name; include /etc/nginx/fastcgi_params; fastcgi_param SCRIPT_NAME /index.php; } # Pass the PHP scripts to FastCGI server listening on UNIX sockets. # location ~ \.php$ { try_files $uri @wordpress; fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php5-fpm.sock; fastcgi_index index.php; fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name; include fastcgi_params; }}The main chunk of the mapping is done in the first server block. I'm targeting any subdomain (I will have already weeded out restricted subdomains with other non-relevant code) and rewriting it to ensure that it has a trailing slash to avoid any internal redirects by WordPress for URLs without a trailing slash. From there, the resolver directive is required to resolve URLs defined in proxy_pass, so I am resolving with Google's DNS. I'm also using the proxy_pass_header directive to send over cookies in order to keep WordPress login authentication in tact. proxy_pass defines the URL to map to.
It should also be noted that if you want to use login authentication as well with subdomains, you need to define your custom cookie domain in wp-config.php like this:
define('COOKIE_DOMAIN', '.example.com');And that should be it. You can now enjoy URLs like subdomain.example.com that map to example.com/user/subdomain/ or whatever you want. From there, you can utilize WordPress' Rewrite API to map the mapped URL to specific query args that can be sent to $wp_query for loading custom templates, etc.
the following should do it:
server { listen 80; listen 443; server_name *.example.com; if ($host ~ "^(.*)\.example\.com$" ) { set $subdomain $1;} rewrite ^ $scheme://example.com/$subdomain/$request_uri permanent;}(as an aside: the regex ^ matches all url's the most efficiently, and the standard nginx variable $request_uri holds the uri including arguments so you don't need the (.*) group in the rewrite)
additionally add a second serverblock for the domains you don't want redirected:
server { listen 80; listen 443; server_name cdn.example.com admin.example.com; # do whatever with the requests of the reserved subdomains;}