# Why am I needing to add ampersand manually in rewrites? **URL:** \ **Category:** NGINX\ **Created:** [April 4, 2011, 12:01am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/why-am-i-needing-to-add-ampersand-manually-in-rewrites/205316 "2011-04-04T00:01:34Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 7\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![dubstep](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/d/cdc98d/32.png) [@dubstep](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/dubstep)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2011, 12:01am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/why-am-i-needing-to-add-ampersand-manually-in-rewrites/205316/1 "2011-04-04T00:01:34Z")
In a Wordpress/Buddypress installation, I am having to go through all my code and manually insert ampersands. For example, where there are links to things such as “?r=user” I am having to convert that into “?&r=user” in order for the link to do the required function. Or when it says “?\_wpnonce” I am needing to change it to “?&\_wpnonce”. Am I missing something? Is there an easy rewrite rule I can use for Nginx to fix this? I am on Nginx only, not using it as a proxy to Apache. Posted at Nginx Forum: > **[Why am I needing to add ampersand manually in rewrites?](https://forum.nginx.org/read.php?2,188044,188044#msg-188044)** > > In a Wordpress/Buddypress installation, I am having to go through all my code and manually insert ampersands. For example, where there are links to things such as "?r=user" I am having to convert that into "?&r=user" in order... ---
**Author:** ![jamz](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/b9bd4f/32.png) [@jamz](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/jamz)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2011, 5:56am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/why-am-i-needing-to-add-ampersand-manually-in-rewrites/205316/2 "2011-04-04T05:56:00Z")
On Sun, 2011-04-03 at 18:00 -0400, jamz wrote: > In a Wordpress/Buddypress installation, I am having to go through all my > code and manually insert ampersands. For example, where there are links > to things such as “?r=user” I am having to convert that into “?&r=user” > in order for the link to do the required function. Or when it says > “?\_wpnonce” I am needing to change it to “?&\_wpnonce”. Why would you need to do this? & and ? don’t go next to each other. ? indicates the start of query arguments and & separates them. ?\_wpnonce : correct ?&\_wponce : incorrect ?&r=user : incorrect ?\_wponce&r=user : correct Regards, Cliff ---
**Author:** ![jamz](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/b9bd4f/32.png) [@jamz](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/jamz)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2011, 6:49am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/why-am-i-needing-to-add-ampersand-manually-in-rewrites/205316/3 "2011-04-04T06:49:37Z")
Just to clarify – this is the tutorial I followed: [http://endofweb.co.uk/2010/10/ubuntu-vps-nginx-mysql-php-fpm-phpmyadmin-wordpress/](http://endofweb.co.uk/2010/10/ubuntu-vps-nginx-mysql-php-fpm-phpmyadmin-wordpress/) In my vhost file I had to add client\_max\_body\_size 60M, and in nginx.conf I configured gzip but otherwise everything’s about the same setup. I’m on nginx 0.8.54. Posted at Nginx Forum: > **[Re: Why am I needing to add ampersand manually in rewrites?](https://forum.nginx.org/read.php?2,188044,188099#msg-188099)** > > In a Wordpress/Buddypress installation, I am having to go through all my code and manually insert ampersands. For example, where there are links to things such as "?r=user" I am having to convert that into "?&r=user" in order... ---
**Author:** ![jamz](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/b9bd4f/32.png) [@jamz](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/jamz)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2011, 6:40am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/why-am-i-needing-to-add-ampersand-manually-in-rewrites/205316/4 "2011-04-04T06:40:21Z")
What I’m saying is that my links don’t work correctly unless I do that. I have no idea why. For example, when I could click a link that would take me to something/some?\_wpnonce1234 it would take me to an error page that said “are you sure you want to do this?” but when I added the ampersand, it worked as designed. so something/some?&\_wpnonce1234 would work. So now I’ve gone through my whole site and into the WP and BP core and added ampersands everywhere and my site is fully functional on Nginx. I have Nginx with PHP FPM and the Nginx compatibility plugin for php5. I set it up on a VPS from scratch following a tutorial and it’s all been great except for this one issue. Anybody know why this would ever occur? Posted at Nginx Forum: > **[Re: Why am I needing to add ampersand manually in rewrites?](https://forum.nginx.org/read.php?2,188044,188097#msg-188097)** > > In a Wordpress/Buddypress installation, I am having to go through all my code and manually insert ampersands. For example, where there are links to things such as "?r=user" I am having to convert that into "?&r=user" in order... ---
**Author:** ![jamz](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/b9bd4f/32.png) [@jamz](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/jamz)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2011, 7:24am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/why-am-i-needing-to-add-ampersand-manually-in-rewrites/205316/5 "2011-04-04T07:24:45Z")
On Mon, 2011-04-04 at 00:49 -0400, jamz wrote: > Just to clarify – this is the tutorial I followed: [http://endofweb.co.uk/2010/10/ubuntu-vps-nginx-mysql-php-fpm-phpmyadmin-wordpress/](http://endofweb.co.uk/2010/10/ubuntu-vps-nginx-mysql-php-fpm-phpmyadmin-wordpress/) > In my vhost file I had to add client\_max\_body\_size 60M, and in > nginx.conf I configured gzip but otherwise everything’s about the same > setup. I’m on nginx 0.8.54. I think you must have gotten something wrong. I’d start by double-checking at the vhost config. The “fix” you are doing is not correct. Regards, Cliff ---
**Author:** ![jamz](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/b9bd4f/32.png) [@jamz](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/jamz)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2011, 3:17pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/why-am-i-needing-to-add-ampersand-manually-in-rewrites/205316/6 "2011-04-05T15:17:59Z")
Hi, Haven’t looked at your conf, but you likely forgot a ? at the end of the target in your rewrite statement. Have a look at [Module ngx\_http\_rewrite\_module](http://wiki.nginx.org/HttpRewriteModule#rewrite) (especially the part after “To rewrite a URL with parameters to another URL, use this instead:”). You could also have a look at the WP configuration examples here : [http://kbeezie.com/view/nginx-configuration-examples/](http://kbeezie.com/view/nginx-configuration-examples/) Good luck with it. Antoine. ---
**Author:** ![jamz](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/b9bd4f/32.png) [@jamz](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/jamz)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2011, 7:54am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/why-am-i-needing-to-add-ampersand-manually-in-rewrites/205316/7 "2011-04-04T07:54:59Z")
Thanks for your help, Cliff. I have a feeling that what you say is spot-on. Perhaps from that tutorial I have added in some kind of redirect or something that is causing the ? links to not work without an appended &. It’s really weird. Maybe I should try replacing the & with another ?. If I’m removing the first ? by default, that would make sense then. Although, I have checked the site across many browsers now, and everything is working exactly how it should. Load times are extremely fast. Before, I got lots of error messages. So while this fix isn’t necessarily correct, it seems to be working, and as I’ve repeated it across different links, they all start to work. So I’m going to roll with it for now…I’m on a time crunch to get this up. I’ll have to look more into it later. Until then, if you or anyone thinks of anything, please make a shout 🙂 Jon Posted at Nginx Forum: > **[Re: Why am I needing to add ampersand manually in rewrites?](https://forum.nginx.org/read.php?2,188044,188110#msg-188110)** > > In a Wordpress/Buddypress installation, I am having to go through all my code and manually insert ampersands. For example, where there are links to things such as "?r=user" I am having to convert that into "?&r=user" in order...