literal thoughts

April 12, 2008

lighttpd rewrite rules for WordPress

Filed under: english — Hinrik Örn Sigurðsson @ 3:15 am

I am a fan of pretty, easy-to-remember URLs (see your address bar). WordPress, the software this blog runs on, allows for such things, but it requires you to make use of so-called rewrite rules on the web server end.

For Apache users, those rules are supplied with WordPress, and it can even set them up for you automatically in some cases. I, however, use lighttpd, not Apache. WordPress does not come with rewrite rules for lighttpd, so I turned to Google. I don’t remember exactly how it transpired, but I recall most of the example rules I found being broken in one way or another, so I fixed some of them up and came up with ones that work perfectly (as far as I know). I hope they can be useful to others, so here goes.

Note: These have been tested with versions 2.3 and 2.5. I’m not sure how well they work with past or future releases.

First, make sure that the mod_rewrite module is loaded.

Single-user WordPress (probably what you want)

Update: Here is a more general solution -> http://sudhaker.com/2008/04/wordpress-permalinks-lighttpd/

Create a file called /etc/lighttpd/wp-rewrite.conf with the following contents:

url.rewrite-once = (
    "^" + wpdir + "(wp-.+).*/?" => "$0",
    "^" + wpdir + "(sitemap.xml)" => "$0",
    "^" + wpdir + "(xmlrpc.php)" => "$0",
    "^" + wpdir + "keyword/([A-Za-z_0-9-])/?$" => wpdir + "index.php?keyword=$1",
    "^" + wpdir + "(.+)/?$" => wpdir + "index.php/$1"
)

Then, in your /etc/lighttpd/lighttpd.conf, you should have something similar to this:

$HTTP["host"] =~ "blog\.nix\.is" {
    var.wpdir = "/"
    include "wp-rewrite.conf"
}

If you installed WordPress in some place other than the web root (e.g. /blog/), then adjust var.wpdir accordingly.

Multi-user WordPress (mu.wordpress.org)

Source: http://mu.wordpress.org/forums/topic.php?id=3901

Create /etc/lighttpd/wpmu-rewrite.conf with the following contents:

server.error-handler-404 = "/index.php"
url.rewrite-once = (
    "^/(.*/)?files/$" => "/index.php",
    "^/(.*/)?files/(.*)" => "/wp-content/blogs.php?file=$2",
    "^(/wp-admin/.*)" => "$1",
    "^/([_0-9a-zA-Z-]+/)?(wp-.*)" => "/$2",
    "^/([_0-9a-zA-Z-]+/)?(.*\.php)$" => "/$2",
)

Then, in lighttpd.conf:

$HTTP["host"] =~ "domain\.com" {
    simple-vhost.default-host = "domain.com"
    include "wpmu-rewrite.conf"
}

This might be slightly different depending on your vhost setup, but you get the idea.

80 Comments »

  1. What about multi user with different domains? Then cookies no longer work.

    Comment by Viðar — April 20, 2008 @ 1:28 pm

  2. What about multi user with different domains? Then cookies no longer work.

    That has nothing to do with pretty URLs, but here’s the solution to your problem anyway: http://wpmudev.org/project/Multi-Site-Manager

    Comment by literal — April 20, 2008 @ 2:12 pm

  3. Thank you

    It works on my sites :D

    Comment by Phim Online — April 26, 2008 @ 7:25 pm

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  5. I’m getting:

    2008-05-19 20:23:08: (server.c.872) WARNING: unknown config-key: url.rewrite-once (ignored)

    When I restart lighttpd after adding this script, my /etc/lighttpd/lighttpd.conf has this:

    $HTTP["host"] =~ “grisepjok\.dancable\.com” {
    var.wpdir = “/”
    include “wp-rewrite.conf”
    }

    What do I miss in this setup?

    / Denbert

    Comment by Denbert — May 19, 2008 @ 6:29 pm

  6. I think you forgot to load mod_rewrite. Try adding this above the code you pasted:

    server.modules += ( "mod_rewrite" )

    Comment by Hinrik Örn Sigurðsson — May 20, 2008 @ 11:32 am

  7. Thanks ALOT.

    You are my new personal hero.

    Fantastic.

    / Denbert

    Comment by Denbert — May 20, 2008 @ 7:34 pm

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  11. Sorry, URL changed

    http://sudhaker.com/web-development/wordpress/wordpress-permalinks-lighttpd.html

    This works seamlessly without any side effect.

    Cheers,
    Sudhaker

    Comment by Sudhaker Raj — October 16, 2008 @ 1:11 pm

  12. Very useful tip,awesome post.

    Comment by caleta de fuste — November 2, 2008 @ 1:12 pm

  13. worked great, thanks!!!

    Comment by webhosting-dir — November 8, 2008 @ 1:29 am

  14. Good blog

    Comment by satheesh — December 8, 2008 @ 10:22 pm

  15. Hmm. Good post.

    Comment by breezee1205 — December 9, 2008 @ 11:38 am

  16. Thanks for this – great idea.

    Comment by Moliv — December 11, 2008 @ 9:51 pm

  17. Thanks for the post, I have been having the same problems.

    Comment by yongyuth — December 12, 2008 @ 1:57 am

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  19. Hi, I am administrating one student webpage and would like to change the default tags for posts to the nice permalinks. Wordpress mentioned that I have to update the .htaccess… Can you please help me what I have to do next, do I have to install something, do I have to rewrite all articles? Unfortunately my access to the webserver is limited. CU harald

    Comment by harald — January 23, 2009 @ 12:09 pm

  20. Good stuff i’ve been searched this plugin and This works seamlessly without any side effect.

    Comment by Ardhi SEO — January 24, 2009 @ 11:24 pm

  21. thanks for the post i just created my website in wordpress and this helps a lot

    Comment by quality seo service — February 6, 2009 @ 7:50 am

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  23. this is works actually. i have a subdomain points to a folder inside the wp folder. after i add this rewrite rule. this page stopped working. strange..

    Comment by jason — March 19, 2009 @ 7:06 pm

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  32. you’ve done a great job. this is really works .

    Comment by wisata seo sadau — June 2, 2009 @ 9:40 am

  33. I have found what i was looking for !!! thx )

    Comment by BestHelen — June 6, 2009 @ 1:31 am

  34. you are right!

    Comment by tiffany and co — June 10, 2009 @ 5:02 am

  35. Interesting post. I have made a twitter post about this. Hope others find it as interesting as I did.

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  37. Something which the tutorial doesn’t mention, and probably should because it got me very confused when things didn’t work, is that you need to restart lighttpd for this to take effect. Maybe obvious to seasoned syadmins but I’m a n00b and it would have been helpful :P

    sudo /etc/init.d/lighttpd restart

    Should do the trick. Thanks for the post though, very helpful.

    Comment by Alex — June 14, 2009 @ 6:23 pm

  38. verry nice thnx

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  39. i have found what i was looking for !!! thx )

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  41. Your blog is great! Just bookmarked it :)

    Comment by James Kingston — June 20, 2009 @ 9:13 am

  42. this is works actually. i have a subdomain points to a folder inside the wp folder. after i add this rewrite rule. this page stopped working. strange..

    Comment by oyUn — June 22, 2009 @ 6:13 pm

  43. A complicated one but thanks for posting this.

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  45. Hi, thnkyou so much for this it works with all my wordpress installs

    What I would like to ask is how do I turn it off in certain static directories within my main wordpress directory, I used to achieve this on apache with .htaccess by essentially turning the rewrite engine off inside the directory I needed to work as a normal directory

    I hope I made that sound clear enough and not confusing ;-)

    Thankyou for your help m8

    Comment by Marty — July 7, 2009 @ 1:07 pm

  46. hi again for a simple workaround I used this
    “^/.*\.(jpg|jpeg|gif|png|swf|avi|mpg|mpeg|mp3|flv|ico|css|html|htm)$” => “$0″,
    and now anything I may have uploaded into a folder that is inside my wordpress install but independant of wordpress is accessible

    I know this isnt the best solution but it will suffice for me for now

    Once again thankyou for this useful tip I will be subscribing to this blog now!

    Comment by Marty — July 7, 2009 @ 5:17 pm

  47. This works seamlessly without any side effect.

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  49. Thanks for your information!

    Comment by links of london — July 27, 2009 @ 8:35 am

  50. Hi,

    Thanks for the information,just found this post my technorati news feed section! I was searching for this since past 3 months and i am glad to see it here. Thanking you much

    Martin

    Comment by Water ionizer — August 13, 2009 @ 3:50 am

  51. thanks for the info, just what I needed

    Comment by Jhonatan "directorio cusco" Juanca — September 1, 2009 @ 12:07 am

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    more of your post.Thank you very much for your post once more.

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  56. Thanks for these instructions! :)

    It was following these instructions that got my rewrite rules working for wordpress-mu + lighttpd

    I had a problem with buddypress though. I managed to fix it by following the link to your source for wpmu instructions and managed to fix my code with a couple of lines.

    If you need to get buddypress working properly with lighttpd then see:

    http://trac.buddypress.org/ticket/1078#comment:10

    Comment by Josef Davies-Coates — September 27, 2009 @ 3:58 pm

  57. Wow,
    What a nice post,i just found this post story from my technorati profile news feeds section! I was searching for this since past 3 months and i am glad to see it here. Thanking you much

    Kathe

    Comment by Catherine Michael — October 11, 2009 @ 3:25 am

  58. Great helpful information, Thanks for this nice post, just subscribed your feed, hope you will update new post soon.
    keep it up.

    Aaron.

    Comment by Aaron Wall — October 11, 2009 @ 8:01 am

  59. Thank you. Fot lighttpd users it’s really usefull. We have a lot o Apache Rewrite/.htaccess tutorials but it’s different for lighttpd.

    Comment by File Search — October 12, 2009 @ 3:11 pm

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    Comment by SouthWind35 — October 23, 2009 @ 1:44 pm

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  63. Hi, thank you so much for this post. Continue posting like this one.

    Comment by US College Search — October 29, 2009 @ 10:41 am

  64. Thanks for the excellent work, you saved me….

    Comment by Gaurav — November 1, 2009 @ 4:50 pm

  65. Ya thats i looking for. Very good it will me help for my wp blog.

    best thanks.

    Comment by Paul Pütz Thapa — November 2, 2009 @ 5:48 pm

  66. Thanks ALOT.

    You are my new personal hero.

    Fantastic.

    Comment by Mark — November 3, 2009 @ 7:36 am

  67. Its very useful info thanx very much

    Comment by fast software — November 5, 2009 @ 9:45 pm

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  70. Thanks for this – great idea.

    Comment by Berufsbekleidung — December 6, 2009 @ 7:26 pm

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  73. It was following these instructions that got my rewrite rules working for wordpress-mu + lighttpd

    I had a problem with buddypress though. I managed to fix it by following the link to your source for wpmu instructions and managed to fix my code with a couple of lines.

    If you need to get buddypress working properly with lighttpd then see:

    Comment by araç sorgulama — December 29, 2009 @ 11:47 am

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  75. Very good it will me help for my wp blog

    Comment by reiner — January 26, 2010 @ 3:14 pm

  76. One of the best tutorial i found about wordpress..Thanks for sharing it..
    Can you make this a little more complicated. This is not for begginers I take it
    Keep it up !!

    Comment by Battery Duracell — February 15, 2010 @ 7:18 am

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    Comment by Karina Blagman — March 5, 2010 @ 8:50 am

  79. Thank you very much …………
    …………………………..

    Comment by ทํานายฝัน — March 6, 2010 @ 1:32 pm

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