Nginx – Meaning of the ~ (tilde) in the location block of the nginx.conf

You need a little background about regex.

Please try the code below and see if it helps.

location ~ ^/([^/]+)/([^/?]+)$ {
  alias /home/website/profiles/$1/$2;
}

Any redirect to localhost doesn't make sense from a remote system (e.g. client's Web browser). So the rewrite flags permanent (301) or redirect (302) are not usable in your case.

Please try following setup using a transparent rewrite rule:

location  /foo {
  rewrite /foo/(.*) /$1  break;
  proxy_pass         http://localhost:3200;
  proxy_redirect     off;
  proxy_set_header   Host $host;
}

Use curl -i to test your rewrites. A very subtle change to the rule can cause nginx to perform a redirect.