NGINX Servers

You’re right — the current atec-webp .htaccess rules go beyond simple WebP file rewrites. They include:

• MIME type definition
• Cache Vary headers (for Accept-Encoding and Accept)
• Three rewrite layers:
  1. Serving .Xwebp.webp (e.g., optimized variants),
  2. Falling back to .webp,
  3. Fallback conversion via img2webp.php.

This layered setup allows compatibility and graceful degradation — but yes, it’s all Apache-specific.

Serve .webp images when the browser supports it

location ~* ^(.+).(jpe?g|png|gif|bmp)$ {
set $img_uri $uri;

💡 Equivalent NGINX Configuration

Here’s how you could manually replicate this behavior on NGINX:

# Serve .webp images when the browser supports it
location ~* ^(.+)\.(jpe?g|png|gif|bmp)$ {
    set $img_uri $uri;

    # 1. Serve .Xwebp.webp if it exists
    set $webp_x "$img_uri.Xwebp.webp";
    if (-f $document_root$webp_x) {
        add_header Vary "Accept";
        add_header Content-Type image/webp;
        return 200 $webp_x;
    }

    # 2. Serve .webp if it exists
    set $webp "$img_uri.webp";
    if (-f $document_root$webp) {
        add_header Vary "Accept";
        add_header Content-Type image/webp;
        return 200 $webp;
    }

    # 3. Otherwise, fallback to converter
    rewrite ^(.+\.(jpe?g|png|gif|bmp))$ /wp-content/plugins/atec-webp/img2webp.php?src=$1 last;
}

Notes:

• This assumes WordPress is installed at the web root.
• You might need to adjust /wp-content/plugins/... if you’re using symlinks or a custom plugin directory.
• The MIME type for .webp is usually already handled by modern NGINX builds, but if not:

types {
image/webp webp;
}

Summary

✅ Yes, atec-webp works with NGINX, but you need to manually replicate the rewrite rules in your server config.

🚫 The plugin does not automatically configure NGINX, because NGINX doesn’t support runtime config editing (like .htaccess).

I have not tested the NGINX config. But yes it is basically the same. It makes the server deliver .webp if exists. If not, the requet is routed to the build script. On the next request, when .webp was created, it is delivered directly.