Permalinks issue (404) with NGINX and caching

Hi Guys,

I have an issue where pages/permalinks return a 404 on Nginx.

I have been searching high and low for the problem, and a solution to no avail.

I’ve been focussing on maximising security and performance, that when it came down to configure WordPress, I didn’t immediately notice the error, as the main page, and wp-admin works fine.

The only Plugins I’m running is:

WP Super Cache
Nginx Helper
WP Maintenance Mode

For the most part the config is good, all the SSL features and tips that I could find from several blogs and forums have been added, as well as heavy caching. I got frustrated at some point and started adding and removing stuff according to every forum post and blog entry I could find on the matter.

https://pastebin.com/Pngqu4v0:

server {
  listen 80;
  server_name www.website.co.za;
  return 301 https://website.co.za$request_uri;
}
fastcgi_cache_use_stale error timeout invalid_header http_500;
fastcgi_ignore_headers Cache-Control Expires Set-Cookie;

server {
        listen 443 ssl;
        listen [::]:443 ssl;

#SSL + Hardening
add_header Strict-Transport-Security "max-age=31536000; includeSubdomains";
ssl_protocols TLSv1 TLSv1.1 TLSv1.2;
ssl_ciphers 'EECDH+AESGCM:EDH+AESGCM:AES256+EECDH:AES256+EDH';
ssl_prefer_server_ciphers on;
ssl_session_cache shared:SSL:10m;

        ssl_certificate websitecozassl/bundle.cer;
        ssl_certificate_key websitecozassl/key.pem;

        root /var/www/websitecoza;
        server_name website.co.za;
        index   index.php index.html;

#       location / {
                # First attempt to serve request as file, then
                # as directory, then fall back to displaying a 404.
                #try_files $uri $uri/ =404;
#       try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php?q=$uri&$args;
#}

##########

location ~ \.php$ {
                fastcgi_cache microcache;
                fastcgi_cache_key $scheme$host$request_uri$request_method;
                fastcgi_cache_valid 200 301 302 30s;
                fastcgi_cache_use_stale updating error timeout invalid_header http_500;
                fastcgi_pass_header Set-Cookie;
                fastcgi_pass_header Cookie;
                fastcgi_ignore_headers Cache-Control Expires Set-Cookie;
            try_files $uri =404;
                fastcgi_split_path_info ^(.+\.php)(/.+)$;
        fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php5-fpm.sock;
            fastcgi_index index.php;
        fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
        include fastcgi_params;
                fastcgi_cache_bypass $skip_cache;
            fastcgi_no_cache $skip_cache;
#try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php?q=$uri&$args; #not working
                    }
##########

        set $skip_cache 0;

        # POST requests and urls with a query string should always go to PHP
        if ($request_method = POST) {
                set $skip_cache 1;
        }
        if ($query_string != "") {
                set $skip_cache 1;
        }  

        # Don't cache uris containing the following segments
        if ($request_uri ~* "/wp-admin/|/xmlrpc.php|wp-.*.php|/feed/|index.php|sitemap(_index)?.xml") {
                set $skip_cache 1;
        }  

        # Don't use the cache for logged in users or recent commenters
        if ($http_cookie ~* "comment_author|wordpress_[a-f0-9]+|wp-postpass|wordpress_no_cache|wordpress_logged_in") {
                set $skip_cache 1;
        }

#ERROR HANDLING (PAGES)
#    error_page 404 /404.html;
#    error_page 500 502 503 504 /50x.html;
#      root /usr/share/nginx/html;
#  }

#Tip Copied from https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-install-wordpress-with-nginx-on-ubuntu-14-04

gzip on;
gzip_types text/css text/x-component application/x-javascript application/javascript text/javascript text/x-js text/richtext image/svg+xml text/plain text/xsd text/xsl text/xml image/x-icon;
}

Any advice would be greatly appreciated, as I’m sure the problem is staring right at me….