I'm new to Nginx rewrites and looking for help in getting a working and minimal rewrite code. We would like to use urls like 'somecity.domain.com' on campaign materials and have the result go to city-specific content within the 'www' site. So, here are use cases, if the customer enters: www.domain.com (stays) www.domain.com domain.com (goes to) www.domain.com www.domain.com/someuri (stays the same) somecity.domain.com (no uri, goes to) www.domain.com/somecity/prelaunch somecity.domain.com/landing (goes to) www.domain.com/somecity/prelaunch somecity.domain.com/anyotheruri (goes to) www.domain.com/anyotheruri Here's what I've come up with so far, and it partially works. What I can't understand is how to check if there is no path/uri after the host, and I'm guessing there is probably a way better way to do this. if ($host ~* ^(.*?)\.domain\.com) { set $city $1;} if ($city ~* www) { break; } if ($city !~* www) { rewrite ^/landing http://www.domain.com/$city/prelaunch/$args permanent; rewrite (.*) http://www.domain.com$uri$args permanent; }