Redirect requests to a different domain using Nginx

In this tutorial, we will learn to use nginx for redirecting a domain/subdomain to another domain. You might want to use this feature if the service/website running on a subdomain or domain has been moved to a different domain. It also helps prevent broken links and improve SEO.

How to redirect a domain to another domain in nginx server?

For demonstration we are going to redirect domain.com and any of subdomain (sub.domain.domain.com) should be redirected to another-domain.com.

Create the configuration file for the domain in sites-available (or sites-enabled) sub-directory of nginx configuration directory i.e. /etc/nginx/sites-available/domain.com.conf.

$ sudo vim /etc/nginx/sites-available/domain.com.conf

Two different methods to send a user to different domain:

URL string and subdomain will be permanently redirected to another domain. Use one of these methods and put these lines in the configuration file.

Method 1: Using rewrite.

server {
  listen 80;
  server_name domain.com www.domain.com;
  rewrite ^ http://another-domain.com$request_uri? permanent;
}

Method 2(recommended): for nginx version 0.9.1 or higher. Using return with status code 301(Moved permanently) or 302 (found).

server {
  listen 80;
  server_name domain.com www.domain.com;
  return 301 http://www.another-domain.com$request_uri;
}

Replace domain.com and another-domain.com with your subdomain in the code above. All of the queries made to your website's domain.com will be redirected to another-domain.com. After the subdomain name in the requested URL $request_uri(URL stub after subdomain name). We issue a 301 redirection code in our response.

Finally, You can save the file and exit the text editor.

Verify our configuration, then launch Nginx.

It is a recommended practice to test new configurations before loading them to the production server because a single syntax mistake will prevent the Nginx service from running, which will prevent users from accessing your website. You can use the following command to do so.

$ sudo nginx -t -c /etc/nginx/sites-available/domain.com.conf

Enable the site if no issues were discovered. In order to accomplish this, we must build a symbolic link between the site configuration file and the sites-enabled directory using the following command:

$ sudo ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/domain.com.conf /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/domain.com.conf

Finally, Start/Restart/Reload the server to load the changes:

$ sudo systemctl restart nginx

or

$ sudo service nginx restart