Nginx serves .php downloads instead of executing

How to run php files on Nginx? PhpFpm & FastCgi

This article based on two previous

• Install Nginx on Mac OS X
• Nginx sites-available & sites-enabled

Why I download .php files instead of execute?

The simple answer is

Your Nginx server does not know how to trait .php

Our site configuration file from the previous guide updated with lines 9 and 20–27

server {
listen       80;
server_name  test.loc;

    #access_log  logs/host.access.log  main;

    location / {
        root   /var/www;
        index  index.php index.html index.htm;
    }

    #error_page  404              /404.html;

    # redirect server error pages to the static page /50x.html
    #
    error_page   500 502 503 504  /50x.html;
    location = /50x.html {
        root   html;
    }

    location ~ \.php$ {
        root           /var/www;
        fastcgi_pass   127.0.0.1:9000;
        fastcgi_index  index.php;
        fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
        include        fastcgi_params;
    }
}

You need to add lines 20–27 to explain how to execute .php files

1st : add index.php in index

Add index.php to index.

2nd : add location .php

Explain to Nginx how to execute your .php files

fastcgi_param  SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;

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