What is a reverse proxy?
A reverse proxy is a server that sits in front of your apps, receives all requests and forwards them to the right one.
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A reverse proxy is a receptionist for your web applications. Visitors talk only to the receptionist, who checks who they want and passes the request to the correct office in the back. The apps behind it never face the internet directly. Nginx, Caddy, Traefik and HAProxy are the usual choices.
You meet one whenever several apps share one server or one domain: blog.example.com goes to a WordPress container, api.example.com to a Node service, both on port 443. The proxy handles TLS certificates once for everyone, can cache static files, balance load across copies of an app, and hide internal ports. In Kubernetes the same job is done by an Ingress controller.
server {
listen 443 ssl;
server_name api.example.com;
location / { proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:3000; }
}See also: What is a port? and What is TLS?
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See also
- 0408 What a reverse proxy is and when you need one A reverse proxy is a server that sits in front of your application, accepts requests from the internet and forwards them to… Beginner · Explains an idea · Any system Article Web servers & reverse proxies 15 Oct 2026
- 0409 Nginx as a reverse proxy with HTTPS Put Nginx in front of an app on localhost: a server block that proxies to the port, forwards the client headers, supports… Intermediate · Step by step · Linux Article Deploying sites · Web servers & reverse proxies 15 Oct 2026
- 0410 Caddy: HTTPS reverse proxy in five lines Caddy gets and renews TLS certificates on its own. Install it, write a Caddyfile with your domain and the port your app… Beginner · Step by step · Linux Article Deploying sites · Web servers & reverse proxies 15 Oct 2026
- 0411 CORS explained, and how to fix the browser error The browser blocks a request from one origin to another unless the server allows it with Access-Control headers. Fix it in the… Intermediate · Step by step · Any system, Browser Article Making requests · Web servers & reverse proxies 15 Oct 2026
- 0412 Deploy a static site: from folder to a URL Take a folder of HTML, CSS and JavaScript and publish it at your own domain with HTTPS on a small Linux server… Beginner · Guided project · Linux, macOS Article Deploying sites · Web servers & reverse proxies 15 Oct 2026
- 0413 Fix: 502 Bad Gateway from Nginx Nginx is running but could not get a valid response from your application. Read the error log, check that the app is… Intermediate · Fixes an error · Linux Article Web servers & reverse proxies 15 Oct 2026
Repos in the wild
- Caddy: the web server with automatic HTTPS caddyserver/caddy Caddy is an open-source web server and reverse proxy written in Go that obtains and renews TLS certificates on its own, with a configuration file short enough to memorize and HTTP/1, 2 and 3 support out of the box. GitHub
- Traefik: a reverse proxy that configures itself from Docker and Kubernetes traefik/traefik Traefik is an open-source edge router that discovers services from Docker labels, Kubernetes resources and other providers and routes traffic to them, with automatic Let's Encrypt certificates and a dashboard. GitHub
History
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- Dominik +826 chars