Joomla in Google appengine

I'm not sure if this has been solved but this nginx config works for my joomla installation.

server {
  server_name example.com;
  rewrite ^ http://www.example.com$request_uri permanent;
 }
server {
  server_name www.example.com;
  root /home/public_html/example.com/public;
  error_page   404          /404.html;
  try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php?q=$request_uri;

  index index.php index.htm index.html;
  # serve static files directly
  location ~* ^.+\.(jpg|jpeg|gif|css|png|js|ico|html)$ {
    access_log off;
    expires 30d;
  }
  location 404.html{
    index /404.html;
  }
  location ~* \.php$ {
    # By all means use a different server for the fcgi processes if you need to
    fastcgi_pass 127.0.0.1:9000;
    include /etc/nginx/fastcgi_params;
    fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
    fastcgi_param QUERY_STRING $query_string;
    fastcgi_param REQUEST_METHOD $request_method;
    fastcgi_param CONTENT_TYPE $content_type;
    fastcgi_param CONTENT_LENGTH $content_length;
  }
  location ~ /\.ht {
    deny all;
  }
}

your missing some DNS configuration

you need to have a dns record that will translate staff.mysite.org into the IP address of your server, if you are running internal dns then this is no problem, and it totally depends on your local dns configuration, 2 examples:

if your running a firewall like pfsense with dns forwarding, you can setup a single dns record that will send staff.mysite.org to the IP of your intranet server

if however you are running standard dns servers like Apple's or Windows DNS then you will have to locally create the zone for the whole domain and replicate the current values found on the internet and then add the staff subdomain with the local IP.