So I've recently migrated from apache2/mpm-prefork to nginx/php5-fpm with the help of a couple tutorials, and for the main WordPress site that I host, everything is operational; some tweaking lies ahead certainly, but it's operational nonetheless.

I then switched my focus to getting some personal sites working, the first being an installation of Gallery3. First hurdle: php.ini settings, in particular short-tags need to be on. No problem, create a .user.ini file with the proper configuration and that's done. Second hurdle: rewrites. Gallery3 uses an index.php dispatcher which requires some rewrite configuration. I'll admit I'm bad at this (rewrites in general but in particular nginx config rewrites/logic) and, after searching and trial/error, I've got it working. Except it uses if () within location.

Here's my config, if anyone can help me migrate to try_files, I'd be appreciative:

server {
        listen 80;
        server_name site.com;

        access_log /var/log/nginx/ionly.servebeer_access.log;
        error_log /var/log/nginx/ionly.servebeer_error.log;

        root /home/tom/sites/site.com;
        index index.php index.html index.htm;

        if ($http_host != "site.com") {
                rewrite ^ http://site.com$request_uri permanent;
        }

        include global/restrictions.conf;

        # Additional rules go here.
        location ~.php$ {
                try_files $uri =404;
                fastcgi_pass 127.0.0.1:9000;
                fastcgi_index index.php;
                fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME /home/tom/sites/site.com$fastcgi_script_name;
                include fastcgi_params;
        }

        location /gallery3/ {
                if (!-e $request_filename) {
                        rewrite ^/gallery3/index.php/(.+)$ /gallery3/index.php?kohana_uri=$1 last;
                        rewrite ^/gallery3/(.+)$ /gallery3/index.php?kohana_uri=$1 last;
                        rewrite ^/gallery3/$ /gallery3/index.php?kohana_uri=/ last;
                }

        }
}

Edit:
I could not get the suggestions found here to work. All 404.

Edit2:
I also saw this, but I don't understand it. Can anybody comment?