>The catch all location is falling back to index.php without any arguments. Is that the way it's supposed to be?

Yes, adding arguments causes a redirect loop for some reason.

>The URIs starting with page have a fallback to index.php with args.

Those pages use in-line javascript editing which requires args to be appended to index.php. Unlike the earlier catch all location, this does not cause a redirecting issue.

>Is index.php your PHP "handler"? If it is then use this:

>location = /index.php {
>include fastcgi_params;
>include fastcgi_config;
>fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
>}

I tried that, but the site no longer loaded any styling and was just giant text and white background.