https://www.digitalocean.com/community/questions/enabling-nginx-mod_rewrite

https://www.nginx.com/resources/wiki/start/topics/recipes/wordpress/

open the file below replacing ‘default’ if necessary with the sites server block:

$ sudo nano /etc/nginx/sites-available/default

Replace:

try_files $uri $uri/ =404;

with:

try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php?$args;

If using a subfolder (say /wordpress), you’ll have to add an extra location /wordpress/ block to your configuration file :

location /wordpress/ { try_files $uri $uri/ /wordpress/index.php?$args; }

Restart nginx:

$ sudo service nginx restart

ERRORS

Above is not working for local development. Also tried adding below code (underneath the ‘try_files…’ code and within the server block):

if (!-e $request_filename) {
    rewrite ^.*$ /index.php last;
 }