How do I set up an Nginx server block with PHP-FPM for a PHP site?

Nginx does not run PHP itself; it passes .php requests to PHP-FPM through a socket. Downloads of PHP source mean no location ~ \.php$ block is active (or the wrong server block matched).

server {
    listen 80;
    server_name example.com www.example.com;
    root /var/www/example.com/public;
    index index.php index.html;

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

    location ~ \.php$ {
        include snippets/fastcgi-php.conf;
        fastcgi_pass unix:/run/php/php8.3-fpm.sock;
    }

    location ~ /\.(?!well-known) {
        deny all;
    }
}

Steps on Debian/Ubuntu

1. Save it as /etc/nginx/sites-available/example.com.
2. Enable: sudo ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/example.com /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/.
3. Remove the default site if it conflicts: sudo rm /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/default.
4. Test and reload: sudo nginx -t && sudo systemctl reload nginx.

Check PHP-FPM: systemctl status php8.3-fpm, and confirm the socket path with ls /run/php/. A mismatched version in the path is the commonest mistake.

Notes

• root should point at the public folder (for Laravel, public), never the project root.
• try_files in the PHP location prevents arbitrary file execution on some old setups; the fastcgi-php.conf snippet includes it.
• File ownership: the www-data user must read the files and write only where needed (storage, uploads).
• Server name matching: requests to an IP or unknown host fall to the first (default) server block.

You can generate a starting config with the Nginx config generator.