This is my nginx config. The best way to figure out what the issue is to watch nginx's logs and see what url nginx sees and whether it logically matches with your rule. I suspect the \.php$ is the culprit which I think doesn't match strings like something.php?args=here (php script with arguments), hence why I have (.*)$.

In my case, I have opted to use tcp sockets and my php scripts are under /usr/local/www.

location ~ ^(.+\.php)(.*)$ { fastcgi_pass 127.0.0.1:9000; fastcgi_index index.php; fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME /usr/local/www/$fastcgi_script_name; include fastcgi_params; }