Are you already loosing you hair trying to configure your vanilla forum url-rewrite on NGINX?
If your forum is installed on a main domain not a subdomain I might have the solution for you. here’s what got, please let me know if it works for you…
server { listen 80; server_name yourdomain.com; root /usr/share/nginx/youvanilladirectory/; #access_log /usr/share/nginx/youvanilladirectory/access.log; access_log off; #error_log /usr/share/nginx/youvanilladirectory/error.log; error_log off; index index.php index.html index.htm; #Root location location ^~ /discussion/download/ { rewrite ^/(.+)$ /index.php?p=$1 last;} location ^~ /utility/thumbnail/ { rewrite ^/(.+)$ /index.php?p=$1 last;} location / { try_files $uri $uri/ @forum; } # Rewrite to prettify the URL and hide the ugly PHP stuff # Start with this commented out until you configure it in Vanilla! location @forum { rewrite ^/(.+)$ /index.php?p=$1 last; } location ~ \.php$ { fastcgi_pass 127.0.0.1:9000; fastcgi_index index.php; fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name; include fastcgi_params; } location ~* \.(js|css|png|jpg|jpeg|gif|ico)(\?ver=[0-9.]+)?$ { expires 1y; } }