If you are setting up a WordPress multisite, you might notice that the WordPress install displays the Apache settings for the .htaccess file, but does not provide any settings for Nginx.
Open the wp-config.php file and add the following line
/* Multisite */ define('WP_ALLOW_MULTISITE', true);
Select the type of Multisite install you wish to use and click on the install button.
You will now see a config that would need to be added to your wp-config.php file. Once that is added and the file is saved, the multisite should be activated.
To activate multisite completely while using Nginx you would need to update the Nginx config as mentioned below.
Nginx config for Sub-directories for domain named example.com:
server {
##DM - uncomment following line for domain mapping
#listen 80 default_server;
server_name example.com *.example.com ;
##DM - uncomment following line for domain mapping
#server_name_in_redirect off;
access_log /var/log/nginx/example.com.access.log;
error_log /var/log/nginx/example.com.error.log;
root /var/www/example.com/htdocs;
index index.php;
if (!-e $request_filename) {
rewrite /wp-admin$ $scheme://$host$uri/ permanent;
rewrite ^(/[^/]+)?(/wp-.*) $2 last;
rewrite ^(/[^/]+)?(/.*.php) $2 last;
}
location / {
try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php?$args ;
}
location ~ .php$ {
try_files $uri =404;
include fastcgi_params;
fastcgi_pass 127.0.0.1:9000;
}
location ~* ^.+.(ogg|ogv|svg|svgz|eot|otf|woff|mp4|ttf|rss|atom|jpg|jpeg|gif|png|ico|zip|
tgz|gz|rar|bz2|doc|xls|exe|ppt|tar|mid|midi|wav|bmp|rtf)$ {
access_log off; log_not_found off; expires max;
}
location = /robots.txt { access_log off; log_not_found off; }
location ~ /. { deny all; access_log off; log_not_found off; }
}
Nginx Config for Sub-domains for domain named example.com :
server {
##DM - uncomment following line for domain mapping
#listen 80 default_server;
server_name example.com *.example.com ;
##DM - uncomment following line for domain mapping
#server_name_in_redirect off;
access_log /var/log/nginx/example.com.access.log;
error_log /var/log/nginx/example.com.error.log;
root /var/www/example.com/htdocs;
index index.php;
location / {
try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php?$args ;
}
location ~ .php$ {
try_files $uri =404;
include fastcgi_params;
fastcgi_pass 127.0.0.1:9000;
}
location ~* ^.+.(ogg|ogv|svg|svgz|eot|otf|woff|mp4|ttf|rss|atom|jpg|jpeg|gif|png|ico|zip|
tgz|gz|rar|bz2|doc|xls|exe|ppt|tar|mid|midi|wav|bmp|rtf)$ {
access_log off; log_not_found off; expires max;
}
location = /robots.txt { access_log off; log_not_found off; }
location ~ /. { deny all; access_log off; log_not_found off; }
}