Nginx downloads PHP files instead of showing them (not a socket issue) - php

Question

So I am setting up my first Linode (sort of new to managing everything myself). However, I have the following problem. The browser downloads the php file instead of executing it and MS Internet Explorer shows the file's content instead of downloading it.
I've read through a lot of content/answers about this problem but nothing seems works so I'd appreciate your help.
Important to note is that the website "crashes" only when I add the following line to the Virtual Host file
location ~* .(ico|jpg|webp|jpeg|gif|css|png|js|ico|bmp|zip|woff)$ {
expires 365d;
}
Here are the two files in full
NGINX.CONF
user www-data;
worker_processes 4;
pid /run/nginx.pid;
events {
worker_connections 768;
multi_accept on;
}
http {
##
# Basic Settings
##
sendfile on;
tcp_nopush on;
tcp_nodelay on;
keepalive_timeout 10s;
types_hash_max_size 2048;
# server_tokens off;
server_names_hash_bucket_size 64;
# server_name_in_redirect off;
include /etc/nginx/mime.types;
default_type application/octet-stream;
##
# SSL Settings
##
# ssl_protocols TLSv1 TLSv1.1 TLSv1.2; # Dropping SSLv3, ref: POODLE
# ssl_prefer_server_ciphers on;
##
# Logging Settings
##
access_log /var/log/nginx/access.log;
error_log /var/log/nginx/error.log debug;
##
# Gzip Settings
##
gzip on;
gzip_disable "msie6";
gzip_vary on;
gzip_proxied any;
gzip_comp_level 6;
gzip_buffers 16 8k;
gzip_http_version 1.1;
gzip_types text/plain text/css application/json application/javascript text/xml application/xml application/xml+rss text/javascript;
##
# Virtual Host Configs
##
include /etc/nginx/conf.d/*.conf;
include /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/*;
}
and the sites-available/default file
server {
listen 80 default_server;
listen [::]:80 default_server;
root /www/bloggingwithdani.com;
index index.html index.php index.htm;
server_name localhost;
# pagespeed On;
# pagespeed FileCachePath "/var/cache/ngx_pagespeed/";
# pagespeed EnableFilters combine_css,combine_javascript;
location / {
try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php?$args;
}
error_page 404 /404.html;
error_page 500 502 503 504 /50x.html;
location = /50x.html {
root /usr/share/nginx/html;
}
location ~* .(ico|jpg|webp|jpeg|gif|png|ico|bmp|zip|woff|css|js|)$ {
expires 365d;
}
location ~ /\. {
deny all;
}
location ~* /(?:uploads|files)/.*\.php$ {
deny all;
}
location ~ [^/]\.php(/|$) {
try_files $uri =404;
fastcgi_split_path_info ^(.+\.php)(/.+)$;
if (!-f $document_root$fastcgi_script_name) {
return 404;
}
fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php5-fpm.sock;
fastcgi_index index.php;
fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
include fastcgi_params;
}
}

Answer 1

your php location block looks wrong to me. here's my location block for php
location ~ \.(php)$ {
try_files $uri = 404;
location ~ \..*/.*\.php$ {return 404;}
fastcgi_split_path_info ^(.+\.php)(/.+)$;
fastcgi_keep_conn on;
fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php5-fpm.sock;
# fastcgi_pass 127.0.0.1:9000; #passing directly to the socket
fastcgi_index index.php;
fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
include fastcgi_params;
}
also, your static file caching is wrong, and has an erroneous wild card parameter. remove the last | and optionally add some extra configuration options to further optimize delivery of static content.
location ~* .(ico|jpg|webp|jpeg|gif|png|ico|bmp|zip|woff|css|js)$ {
expires max;
add_header Vary Accept-Encoding;
access_log off;
}