Nginx Proxy for a GitHub Page?

Question

We have a blog that we host on github with Jekyll; it is there : http://blog.superfeedr.com

Ideally, I want it to be at http://superfeedr.com/blog/ because we need to add some AJAX and we need to avoid the "Same Origin Policy" problems.

We use Nginx on our "main" webserver, and I have the following setup :

location /blog/ {

proxy_pass http://blog.superfeedr.com/;
    proxy_redirect     off;
    proxy_max_temp_file_size 0;

    client_max_body_size       10m;
    client_body_buffer_size    128k;

    proxy_connect_timeout      90;
    proxy_send_timeout         90;
    proxy_read_timeout         90;

    proxy_buffer_size          4k;
    proxy_buffers              4 32k;
    proxy_busy_buffers_size    64k;
    proxy_temp_file_write_size 64k;
}

Unfortunately, as you can see if you go to http://superfeedr.com/blog/ this obviously doesn't work. Oddly enough, we're redirected to Github's homepage.

PS: obviously, we could host the blog on our main server, but the goal is to host it on a different host so that we can almost guarantee it to be online if the site is down...

Answer 1

First, nginx does not send Host header to the blog.superfeedr.com. This makes it send all the required headers:

proxy_set_header   Host                    blog.superfeedr.com;
proxy_set_header   X-Host                 blog.superfeedr.com;
proxy_set_header   X-Real-IP             $remote_addr;
proxy_set_header   X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;

Second, some url rewriting required. By some weird reason this depends on the version of nginx you are using. Anyway, for 0.6.x (0.6.32 for me) this should work:

    location /blog {
                rewrite  ^/blog(.*)$ /$1 last;
                error_page 402 = @blog;
                return 402;
    }
    location @blog {
        proxy_pass http://blog.superfeedr.com;

        # the rest of proxying parameters should be here

         proxy_set_header   Host                    blog.superfeedr.com;
         proxy_set_header   X-Host                 blog.superfeedr.com;
         proxy_set_header   X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
         proxy_set_header   X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
    }

You also need to cover all the paths the blog refers to (css, images etc), e.g.

location /css {
    error_page 402 = @blog;
    return 402;
}

For 0.7.59:

        location /blog {
                set $blog 1;
                rewrite  ^/blog(.*)$ /$1 last;
        }
        location /css {
                set $blog 1;
                error_page 402 = @blog;
                return 402;
        }
        location / {
                if ($blog) {
                        error_page 402 = @blog;
                        return 402;
                }
                # here is where default settings for / should be
                root /usr/local/www/nginx/;
        }
        location @blog {
                proxy_pass http://blog.superfeedr.com;

                # the rest of proxying parameters should be here

                proxy_set_header   Host                   blog.superfeedr.com;
                proxy_set_header   X-Host                 blog.superfeedr.com;
                proxy_set_header   X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
                proxy_set_header   X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
        }

Answer 2

Another way to do this (but without involving nginx) could be with a DNS directive. I think most DNS services offer URL forward service.

For example, in hover.com, first add blog with A directive to 64.99.80.30 under DNS tab, and then in the Forward tab, add blog forward to http://superfeedr.com/blog/

In dnsimple.com, it's simpler, just add blog URL record to forward to http://superfeedr.com/blog/

These forwards, I believe, also work for https:// type URLs.