This is a better Drupal nginx config. Built from a combination of contributions from here:

https://groups.drupal.org/node/305633
https://www.nginx.com/resources/wiki/start/topics/recipes/drupal/

nginx/sites/framework-examples/drupal_8.conf

@@ -1,28 +1,56 @@
 server {
-    listen 80;
+    listen   80;
     listen [::]:80;
 
-    server_name  site_a.dev;
-    root /var/www/site_a;
-    index index.php;
+    #domain name
+    server_name drupal8.dev;
 
+    #file document root. This has to match one of the volumes in docer-composer.yml
+    root /var/www/drupal8;
+
+    # This is the full path to your index file
+    index index.php index.html index.htm;
+
+
+    ## serve imagecache files directly or redirect to drupal if they do not exist.
+    location ~* files/styles {
+      access_log off;
+      expires 30d;
+      try_files $uri @drupal;
+    }
+
+    ## serve imagecache files directly or redirect to drupal if they do not exist.
+    location ~* ^.+.(xsl|xml)$ {
+        access_log off;
+        expires 1d;
+        try_files $uri @drupal;
+    }
+
+    ## Images and static content is treated different
+    location ~* ^.+.(jpg|jpeg|gif|css|png|js|ico|xml)$ {
+        access_log        off;
+        expires           30d;
+    }
 
     location / {
-        try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php?q=$uri&$args;
+        index index.php;
+        # This is cool because no php is touched for static content
+        try_files $uri $uri/ @rewrite;
+        expires max;
     }
 
-    error_page 404 /404.html;
-    error_page 500 502 503 504 /50x.html;
-    location = /50x.html {
-          root /var/www/site_a;
+    location @drupal {
+        rewrite ^/(.*)$ /index.php?q=$1 last;
     }
 
-    location ~ [^/]\.php(/|$) {
-        fastcgi_split_path_info ^(.+?\.php)(/.*)$;
-        if (!-f $document_root$fastcgi_script_name) {
-            return 404;
-        }
 
+    location @rewrite {
+        # Some modules enforce no slash (/) at the end of the URL
+        # Else this rewrite block wouldn't be needed (GlobalRedirect)
+        rewrite ^/(.*)$ /index.php?q=$1;
+    }
+
+    location ~ .php$ {
         fastcgi_pass php-upstream;
         fastcgi_index index.php;
         fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;