URL rewriting for wordpress and lighttpd

by Emil Haukeland on Feb.11, 2007, under lighttpd, php, web, wordpress

URL rewriting in lighttpd works somewhat a bit different than in apache web server. Wordpress will not generate those nice URL’s by default and need some help. I googled around for a solution and found a lot of attempts to solve this. It seems like everyone’s trying to make this as difficult as possible. I have tried to make this a bit more simple.

In your lighttpd.conf or 10-rewrite.conf enable mod_rewrite
and then paste the following code (you will need to edit the $HTTP["host"] though):

$HTTP["host"] =~ "emil.haukeland.name" {
  url.rewrite-final = (
 
    # Exclude some directories from rewriting
    "^/(wp-admin|wp-includes|wp-content|gallery2)/(.*)" => "$0",
 
    # Exclude .php, .html, .gif, .png, .jpg and .txt files at root from rewriting
    "^/(.*.(php|html|gif|png|jpg|txt)$)" => "$0",
    # EDIT: Added a $ at the end of the regexp and
    # excluding of a few more filenames to
    # solve the problem reported by teko. Thanks!
 
    # Handle permalinks and feeds
    "^/(.*)$" => "/index.php/$1"
  )
}

These three rules should cover for every plugin and functionality. If you have other folders witch you will need to access without any redirection (images in a separate folder etc), you have to add this to the first rule

Now change the setting in Options->Permalinks to Custom and create your permalink structure. Personally I prefer this:
/%year%/%monthnum%/%day%/%postname%/

I hope this was helpful

14 Comments for this entry

Knut Urdalen
August 12th, 2008 on 21:30
Thanks dude That was exactly what I needed!

Reply
Helper
December 7th, 2008 on 02:17
For some odd reason the code shows up as “=&gt” and which if copied to lighttpd.conf will result in incorrect syntax. If you get this (I’m using Opera) then replace “=&gt” with “=>”. Obviously you do all of this without the quotes.

I hope this helps some people.

Reply
- Emil Haukeland
  November 2nd, 2009 on 13:38
  This has been fixed
  
  Reply
Martin Riedel
January 3rd, 2009 on 21:29
Thanks a lot for these rewrite rules. I added qTranslate support and am now using them for my own blog.

For anyone wanting wordpress qTranslate lighttpd, check http://mriedel.org/2009/01/03/wordpress-qtranslate-lighttpdwordpress-qtranslate-lighttpd/

Reply
Kevin
February 5th, 2009 on 03:37
Thanks!!! You saved my site. I had tons of broken permalinks, along with other rewrite issues when I moved from Apache to Lighttpd.

Reply
Alin
February 6th, 2009 on 19:06
Fantastic post!!! Cheers!

Reply
Dave Abrahams
June 17th, 2009 on 19:12
I’ve seen about ten different approaches to this problem so far, but http://r00tshell.com/archives/2007/05/16/wordpress-lighttpd-permalinks-without-rewrite/ is the cleverest and simplest, and it looks like it solves other problems as well. Anyone else tried that?

Reply
- Emil Haukeland
  July 11th, 2009 on 02:26
  The reason for using URL rewriting is to avoid
  http://example.com/index.php?post=/2009/07/11/some-post.
  I can’t see how this is solved in the link your mentioning.
  
  Reply
Rockoy
July 12th, 2009 on 06:37
very good
To solve the problem of me
thank

Reply
teko
October 10th, 2009 on 01:45
Thanks for this.

If you put in “php” to say your blog post (www.test.com/2009/10/10/to-testphpsfdsd/) it will give a 404.

You need to put a dollar sign after php like here:
“^/(.*.php$)” => “$0″,

If you want to exclude multiple files (like .txt, .html) use:
“^/(.*.(txt|html)$)” => “$0″,

Reply
- Emil Haukeland
  November 2nd, 2009 on 13:34
  Thanks for this information. The post has been updated
  
  Reply
Jason
October 14th, 2009 on 10:29
THANKS DUDE!!!!! IT solved everything for me now! all set to customize lighttpd

Reply
Jørn
November 27th, 2009 on 14:00
Thanks a lot! This solved my own problems with Wordpress under lighttpd, after moving from Apache.

Now I only have to find out how to optimalize my setup. I feel that Wordpress is slower in Lighttpd than Apache… I’m experience like 5 seconds of loadingtime before anything shows…

Reply
tom
January 30th, 2010 on 07:22
Emil, thanks for the post. Very helpful.

Reply