Não tenho certeza se isso foi resolvido, mas essa configuração do nginx funciona para a instalação do meu joomla.
server { server_name example.com; rewrite ^ http://www.example.com$request_uri permanent; } server { server_name www.example.com; root /home/public_html/example.com/public; error_page 404 /404.html; try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php?q=$request_uri; index index.php index.htm index.html; # serve static files directly location ~* ^.+\.(jpg|jpeg|gif|css|png|js|ico|html)$ { access_log off; expires 30d; } location 404.html{ index /404.html; } location ~* \.php$ { # By all means use a different server for the fcgi processes if you need to fastcgi_pass 127.0.0.1:9000; include /etc/nginx/fastcgi_params; fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$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; } location ~ /\.ht { deny all; } }