Node.js is an open-source JavaScript runtime environment for building scalable and high-performance network applications. It has a built-in HTTP module, which allows developers to create robust web servers, handle requests, and send responses. A simple web server can be created using `http.createServer()`, and different types of requests and responses involve checking the request URL and sending specific responses.
This article explains why web servers and reverse proxies are foundational to modern backends, comparing Nginx (speed, scalability, flexibility) with Apache (stability, security, extensibility), outlining key config blocks/directives, providing static site and reverse-proxy examples, and showcasing microservice routing—arming developers to optimize performance, security, and scalability.
Web servers host, manage, and serve websites, applications, or services over the internet, accepting incoming requests from clients, processing them, and returning responses in various formats. Express.js is a lightweight Node.js framework for building web applications, providing features and tools to create robust, scalable, and maintainable web servers.
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