nginx configuration issues

[Joel Dahl]

Hi,

I've been looking at replacing apache with nginx for a while and today I had 
some time over to play with the nginx configuration.  I have around ~40 
websites and my goal is to set up nginx to handle more websites without me 
needing to reconfigure anything (I would like to avoid creating a new virtual 
host every time a new website needs to be created).  This is just a test of 
course, and not anywhere near production.

My nginx.conf looks like this (don't hesitate to suggest improvements, this is 
my first nginx.conf file after all):

user www www;

worker_processes 1;

pid /var/run/nginx.pid;
error_log /var/log/nginx_error.log;

events {
     worker_connections 1024;
}

http {
     include mime.types;
     default_type application/octet-stream;

     log_format main '$remote_addr - $remote_user [$time_local] $request '
                     '"$status" $body_bytes_sent "$http_referer" '
                     '"$http_user_agent" "$http_x_forwarded_for"';

     sendfile on;
     tcp_nopush on;
     tcp_nodelay off;
     keepalive_timeout 65;

     server_names_hash_bucket_size 128;

     gzip on;

     server {
         listen 80;
         server_name _;

         location / {
             root /home/w/$host;
             index index.php index.html index.htm;
         }

         error_page 500 502 503 504 /50x.html;
         location = /50x.html {
             root /usr/local/etc/nginx/errorpages;
         }

         error_page 404 /404.html;
         location = /404.html {
             root /usr/local/etc/nginx/errorpages;
         }

         location ~ \.php$ {
             fastcgi_pass 127.0.0.1:9000;
             fastcgi_index index.php;
             fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME /home/w/$host$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;
             fastcgi_intercept_errors on;
         }

         location ~ /\.ht {
             deny all;
         }
     }
}

...and at first it seemed to work.  If the directory /home/w/www.foo.com 
exists, requests to www.foo.com works and I can see the website.  However, if 
I try to access www.foo.com/bar I get a "can't find the domain www.foo.com" 
type of error message in my browser.  Browsing to www.foo.com/bar/ works 
however, and www.foo.com/bar/index.php also works.

What am I doing wrong? :)

--
Joel