Reverse Proxy

Integrating a page created in an external website builder into your domain allows you to extend functionality and maintain a consistent interface style. This article explains how to use an NGINX reverse proxy to embed pages from an external service (for example, example.website-builder.com) into your site your-main-site.com at paths /path1/ and /path2/.

⚙️ How it works

NGINX forwards requests from your domain to the external site, acting as an intermediary between the user and the builder service.

Introduction

Choosing a web server and reverse proxy today depends on tasks and infrastructure. Caddy, Traefik, HAProxy, Nginx, and Apache are five popular solutions, each with its strengths and weaknesses.

In this article, we’ll compare them by key criteria: philosophy, installation, SSL, CI/CD, and complexity.

Comparison by Key Criteria

Who Is It For?

🔹 Caddy

Ideal for:

Introduction

Unlike Caddy, which focuses on simplicity, Traefik (pronounced Traffic) was built to solve one specific task: routing traffic in dynamic environments.

It is a reverse proxy and load balancer designed specifically for Docker, Kubernetes, and other orchestrators. The main difference from Nginx is not static configuration, but the ability to automatically discover and serve services.

Key Concepts: Dynamic Configuration

The philosophy of Traefik is built on the principle of Service Discovery.

Introduction

In a world where setting up a web server often requires studying complex configuration files, Caddy offers a radically different approach. It is a modern, multifunctional web server, reverse proxy, and certificate authority in one package.

Caddy was created with a single goal: to provide maximum simplicity. If you are tired of the redundancy of Nginx or Apache, then Caddy is what you’re looking for. Its main “killer feature” is fully automatic SSL certificate management, making it an indispensable tool for developers.

029 | Proxy Servers in Action: HAProxy — High-Performance Load Balancer⚡️🔗

In our series of articles on proxy servers, we’ve already discussed Nginx, a versatile tool combining the roles of a web server and a reverse proxy. Today, we’ll take a look at HAProxy (High Availability Proxy) — a specialized solution focused on a single but extremely important task: high-performance load balancing and ensuring high availability.

What is HAProxy?

HAProxy is free, open-source software that acts as a load balancer and reverse proxy for both TCP and HTTP protocols. It is designed to handle very large volumes of simultaneous connections and is a key component for building highly available and scalable web applications and services. HAProxy is often used as the “brain” in front of a group of servers, distributing incoming traffic among them.

In the previous article, we explored the general principles of proxy servers and their classification. Now it’s time to dive into specific solutions, and we’ll start with Nginx (pronounced “engine-x”) — one of the most popular and high-performance web servers and a powerful reverse proxy. Nginx plays a key role in modern web infrastructure, powering millions of websites worldwide.

What is Nginx?

Nginx is a free, open-source software that was originally developed as a web server to solve the C10k problem (handling a large number of simultaneous connections). Over time, its functionality has expanded significantly, and today Nginx is widely used as:

In today’s internet-driven world, where data constantly travels between millions of devices, it’s often not enough to establish a direct connection — you may need a “middleman.” That’s where a proxy server comes in. It acts as a bridge between you (the client) and the destination resource (server), handling network requests on your behalf. Understanding how proxies work is critical for network security, optimization, and access management.

What is a Proxy Server?

A proxy server (from the English proxy — representative, intermediary) is a server in a computer network that acts as an intermediary between a user (client) and other internet servers. All client requests go through the proxy first, which then forwards them to the destination server. Responses from the destination server also return to the proxy first before being sent back to the client.