I have an existing website that uses laravel 4.2. I am attempting to install October CMS in the /blog subdirectory (to function as a blog and help section only), but something in nginx setup incorrectly. I did the October CMS install wizard, and am able to get the /blog/index.php page to appear correctly. The issue is when I attempt to login to the backend (/blog/backend), I get a 404 page. Below is my virtual-host nginx configuration for this site:

server {
    listen 80;
    server_name my_site;
    root /home/vagrant/my_site/public;

    index index.html index.htm index.php;

    charset utf-8;

    location / {
        try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php?$query_string;
    }

    location = /favicon.ico { access_log off; log_not_found off; }
    location = /robots.txt  { access_log off; log_not_found off; }

    access_log off;
    error_log  /var/log/nginx/my_site.app-error.log error;
    rewrite_log on;

    error_page 404 /index.php;

    sendfile off;

    # October CMS rewrites
    location blog {
        root /home/vagrant/my_site/public/blog;

        try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php$is_args$args;
    }

    rewrite ^/blog/themes/.*/(layouts|pages|partials)/.*.htm /blog/index.php break;
    rewrite ^/blog/bootstrap/.* /blog/index.php break;
    rewrite ^/blog/config/.* /blog/index.php break;
    rewrite ^/blog/vendor/.* /blog/index.php break;
    rewrite ^/blog/storage/cms/.* /blog/index.php break;
    rewrite ^/blog/storage/logs/.* /blog/index.php break;
    rewrite ^/blog/storage/framework/.* /blog/index.php break;
    rewrite ^/blog/storage/temp/protected/.* /blog/index.php break;
    rewrite ^/blog/storage/app/uploads/protected/.* /blog/index.php break;

    location ~ \.php$ {
        fastcgi_split_path_info ^(.+\.php)(/.+)$;
        fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php5-fpm.sock;
        fastcgi_index index.php;
        include fastcgi_params;
        fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
        fastcgi_intercept_errors on;
        fastcgi_buffer_size 16k;
        fastcgi_buffers 4 16k;
        fastcgi_connect_timeout 300s;
        fastcgi_send_timeout 120;
        fastcgi_read_timeout 120;
    }

    location ~ /\.ht {
        deny all;
    }

}

I can get the /blog/backend page to appear (albeit unstyled with css/js) if I add the following directive:

rewrite ^/blog /blog/index.php break; 

Note that with the above rewrite directive, the assets for the /blog/index.php page do come back with a result of 404, so the /blog/index.php page is unstyled as well. However, if I remove the above directive, the links will work again.

I am new to nginx and setting up October CMS and cannot figure this out. Thank you!

You could try location /blog as the standard location is /.

Not an expert myself though...

This fixed it for me:

 pico /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/default

And changing whatever was in the location block to:

 location / { 
           try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php?$query_string;

           location ~* \.php$ {
                   try_files $uri /index.php =404;
                   fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php5-fpm.sock;
                   fastcgi_index index.php;
                   fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
                   fastcgi_intercept_errors on; 
                   include fastcgi_params;
           }   
   }