Nginx Configuration – How to Remove Location Block from $uri

HTTPS and normal HTTP will come in through different ports, so really what you want to do is just redirect any normal HTTP requests that you want to be served over HTTPS to HTTPS. So the following:

server {
  listen                      80;
  server_name                 _;

  location / {
    rewrite ^/(pro)$ https://$host/$1;
  }
}

... should not cause a redirect loop, because it is forwarding only on :80, and it is forwarding TO :443 (which is what HTTPS requests will come in as, by default).

try_files tries the literal path you specify in relation to the defined root directive and sets the internal file pointer. If you use for instance try_files /app/cache/ $uri @fallback; with index index.php index.html; then it will test the paths in this order:

1. $document_root/app/cache/index.php
2. $document_root/app/cache/index.html
3. $document_root$uri

before finally internally redirecting to the @fallback named location. You can also use a file or a status code (=404) as your last parameter but if using a file it must exist.

You should note that try_files itself will not issue an internal redirect for anything but the last parameter. Meaning you cannot do the following: try_files $uri /cache.php @fallback; as that will cause nginx to set the internal file pointer to $document_root/cache.php and serve it, but since no internal redirect takes place the locations aren't re-evaluated and as such it will be served as plain text. (The reason it works with PHP files as the index is that the index directive will issue an internal redirect)