People who during their shared hosting life used to configure everything using only Apache’s .htaccess files, usually translate the following rules:

RewriteCond  %{HTTP_HOST}  example.org
RewriteRule  (.*)          http://www.example.org$1

to something like this:

server {
    listen       80;
    server_name  www.example.org  example.org;
    if ($http_host = example.org) {
        rewrite  (.*)  http://www.example.org$1;
    }
    ...
}

This is a wrong, cumbersome, and ineffective way. The right way is to define a separate server for example.org:

server {
    listen       80;
    server_name  example.org;
    return       301 http://www.example.org$request_uri;
}

server {
    listen       80;
    server_name  www.example.org;
    ...
}

On versions prior to 0.9.1, redirects can be made with:

    rewrite      ^ http://www.example.org$request_uri?;

Another example. Instead of the “upside-down” logic “all that is not example.com and is not www.example.com”:

RewriteCond  %{HTTP_HOST}  !example.com
RewriteCond  %{HTTP_HOST}  !www.example.com
RewriteRule  (.*)          http://www.example.com$1

one should simply define example.com, www.example.com, and “everything else”:

server {
    listen       80;
    server_name  example.com www.example.com;
    ...
}

server {
    listen       80 default_server;
    server_name  _;
    return       301 http://example.com$request_uri;
}

On versions prior to 0.9.1, redirects can be made with:

    rewrite      ^ http://example.com$request_uri?;

Typical Mongrel rules:

DocumentRoot /var/www/myapp.com/current/public

RewriteCond %{DOCUMENT_ROOT}/system/maintenance.html -f
RewriteCond %{SCRIPT_FILENAME} !maintenance.html
RewriteRule ^.*$ %{DOCUMENT_ROOT}/system/maintenance.html [L]

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -f
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ $1 [QSA,L]

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME}/index.html -f
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ $1/index.html [QSA,L]

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME}.html -f
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ $1/index.html [QSA,L]

RewriteRule ^/(.*)$ balancer://mongrel_cluster%{REQUEST_URI} [P,QSA,L]

should be converted to

location / {
    root       /var/www/myapp.com/current/public;

    try_files  /system/maintenance.html
               $uri  $uri/index.html $uri.html
               @mongrel;
}

location @mongrel {
    proxy_pass  http://mongrel;
}