How to put the Forums in a directory instead of homepage

[Whimpers]

Ok Forums.com/forums works. And I see the Nginx homepage for forums.com. How do I edit the homepage with html?

[Juan G.]

Well, you can have anything as the homepage. For example, a Ghost blog that can integrate with NodeBB for comments. However, if you prefer just a static index.html file, see NGINX Docs | Serving Static Content, or as an example nginx config for static site.

[Whimpers]

Do I make a new file in sites-available with the new configuration. Or just add to the Forums.com one

[Juan G.]

Probably you have a line like:

include /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/*;

in /etc/nginx/nginx.conf. So you can choose to have the configuration in one or several files. Maybe in this case it's simpler to add it to the existing file in sites-available, that will already have a symlink in sites-enabled.

[Whimpers]

Where in Nginx.conf should I add that?

[Juan G.]

The include line? Probably it's already there. It just means that all files or symlinks in sites-enabled will be included as Nginx configuration.

Your site config (in the other file we mentioned) probably will be something like:

server {
   ...
   location /forums/ {
       ...
   }
   location / {
       ...
   }
}

[Whimpers]

It was already in Nginx.conf. Now when I go to Forums.com I get error 500 internal server error

[Juan G.]

Are you using the mentioned example with root, index, and try_files? 500 error is usually a misconfiguration, or maybe file permissions, etc.

[Whimpers]

Yes, I am

[Juan G.]

Possibly you have something like this in your /etc/nginx/nginx.conf:

error_log /var/log/nginx/error.log;

In this case you can read the error log with:

sudo cat /var/log/nginx/error.log

[Whimpers]

2018/05/21 22:20:57 [error] 14942#14942: *108 rewrite or internal redirection cycle while internally redirecting to "/index.html", client: 100.12.26.5, server: wowbad.ml, request: "GET / HTTP/1.1", host: "wowbad.ml"

[Juan G.]

There must be something wrong with the Nginx configuration. Can you paste it here?

[Whimpers]

server {
listen 80;

index index.html index.htm;

server_name wowbad.ml;

location /forums/ {
    proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
    proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
    proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Proto $scheme;
    proxy_set_header Host $http_host;
    proxy_set_header X-NginX-Proxy true;

    proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:4567;
    proxy_redirect off;

    # Socket.IO Support
    proxy_http_version 1.1;
    proxy_set_header Upgrade $http_upgrade;
    proxy_set_header Connection "upgrade";
}
location / {
    default_type "text/html";
    try_files $uri.html $uri/ /index.html;
}

}

[Whimpers]

@Juan-G ^^^

[Juan G.]

@whimpers It seems the root line is missing.

[Whimpers]

But what should the root be

[Juan G.]

The folder where your index.html file is located. It often starts with /var/www/... Some people use /srv/mydomain/www or other places.

[Whimpers]

Still getting the same error

[Juan G.]

There is another possible problem:

@whimpers said in How to put the Forums in a directory instead of homepage:

try_files $uri.html $uri/ /index.html;

It looks like this line can cause that error if /index.html can't be accessed, maybe because of permission or owner problems, if the root line is correct.

Since index.html is already in index, you can try something simpler like:

try_files $uri $uri/ =404;

This will give a 404 not found until you fix the permissions problem. Try chmod 777 index.html (from its folder) to see if this is the case. Then change the owner (probably a user sharing a group with the www-data user mentioned in nginx.conf) to be able to use the safer 664.

[Whimpers]

It works! Thanks!