When working with Nginx server blocks, a common requirement is to serve different content from separate filesystem locations based on URL paths. The typical scenario involves:

• Main site content from /primary/path
• Specific subdirectories from alternative roots (e.g., /alternate/path)

Your existing setup attempts to use both root and rewrite directives, which creates a processing loop:

location /petproject {
    root   /home/me/pet-Project/website;
    index  index.html;
    rewrite ^/petproject(.*)$ /$1;
}

The proper approach is to use alias instead of root for path-specific mappings:

server {
    listen       80;
    server_name  www.domain.com;

    location / {
        root   /home/me/Documents/site1;
        index  index.html;
    }

    location /petproject {
        alias   /home/me/pet-Project/website/;
        index  index.html;
    }

    # Error handling remains unchanged
    error_page   500 502 503 504  /50x.html;
    location = /50x.html {
        root   /usr/share/nginx/html;
    }
}

For more complex scenarios with multiple subdirectories:

location /special {
    alias /custom/storage/;
    try_files $uri $uri/ /special-fallback.html;
    
    location ~* \.(php|php5)$ {
        fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php-fpm.sock;
        include fastcgi_params;
    }
}

• Always include trailing slashes in alias paths
• Check filesystem permissions (nginx worker process needs read access)
• Verify path mappings with nginx -T (test configuration)
• Monitor error logs (/var/log/nginx/error.log) for path resolution issues

When setting up Nginx to serve different website sections from different filesystem locations, developers often encounter path resolution issues. The key is understanding how Nginx processes root versus alias directives.

The configuration attempts to serve /petproject from a different directory, but the rewrite causes Nginx to reprocess the request through location matching:

location /petproject {
    root   /home/me/pet-Project/website;
    index  index.html;
    rewrite ^/petproject(.*)$ /$1;  # This causes reprocessing
}

Option 1: Using alias Directive

The most straightforward solution replaces root with alias and removes the rewrite:

location /petproject {
    alias   /home/me/pet-Project/website/;
    index  index.html;
    try_files $uri $uri/ /index.html;
}

Option 2: Proper root Configuration

If you prefer using root, modify the path structure:

location /petproject/ {
    root   /home/me/pet-Project/website;
    index  index.html;
    try_files $uri $uri/ /petproject/index.html;
}

• Missing trailing slashes in directory paths
• Not considering try_files for single-page apps
• Permission issues on the new root directory

Always verify changes with:

sudo nginx -t
sudo systemctl reload nginx