{"id":417,"date":"2026-01-13T08:17:49","date_gmt":"2026-01-12T20:17:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.berserkir.net\/wordpress\/?p=417"},"modified":"2026-01-13T08:17:51","modified_gmt":"2026-01-12T20:17:51","slug":"reverse-proxy-with-nginx","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.berserkir.net\/wordpress\/reverse-proxy-with-nginx\/","title":{"rendered":"Reverse Proxy (with Nginx)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I did a little write-up on how I achieved reverse proxy nirvana with IIS<\/a> quite a while ago now. It made things a lot nicer for me. Like, a lot.<\/em> Then I took it further, and moved to Apache<\/a> (with certbot<\/a>, for that sweet SSL).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now I have a few friends\/colleagues\/acquaintances who run Nginx (I run Apache in my homelab environment nowadays, which is why I migrated from IIS to Apache), so I figured I’d look into how I can help them achieve a reverse proxy with Nginx instead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

Firstly, you’ll need to have a functional Nginx installation. We’re not covering that here, there are plenty of write-ups about that out there. It’s fairly straightforward to do, and simply requires you have root access to the shell on your server.
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Deactivating the default config<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Secondly, you’ll need to unlink the default linked configuration\/virtualhost file (assuming this is a fresh Nginx instance, not serving other sites. If it’s in use for other sites, then this guide could provide a base to build from but will break the existing site if it’s using the default config file which I strongly recommend against doing<\/em>).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

sudo unlink \/etc\/nginx\/sites-enabled\/default<\/code><\/pre>\n\n\n\n
Creating and activating the reverse proxy config file<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Now that’s out of the way, we can create a config for the reverse proxy page (I tend to use the name of the site as the name of the config file)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
sudo nano \/etc\/nginx\/sites-available\/reverse-proxy<\/code><\/pre>\n\n\n\n
In this config file, we will start with something like the following:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
server {\n    listen 80;\n    server_name site.example.com;\n    location \/ {\n        proxy_pass http:\/\/127.0.0.1:8000;\n        proxy_set_header Host $host;\n        proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;\n        proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;\n        proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Proto $scheme;\n    }\n}<\/code><\/pre>\n\n\n\n
Configuration directives<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
The configuration consists of a\u00a0server {...}<\/code>\u00a0block that handles all requests matching the specified conditions. It contains the following data:<\/p>\n\n\n\n