solved it thanks to this: http://forum.nginx.org/read.php?11,4041,4192#msg-4192by radoo - Migration from Other Servers
I was using the exact same trick and cannot figure out how to implement it with nginx. I expected the trick to work out-of-the-box, as it does with apache and lighty, since it's related to php rather than the webserver Right now it's a showstopper for me in migrating a large literature website to nginx, which works incredibly fast for the pages that don't rely on the trick . Anyone has any clby radoo - Migration from Other Servers