What Reverse proxy means
A reverse proxy can serve a blog from another system at example.com/blog, add caching or security, or balance traffic. CDNs and hosts like Netlify, Vercel and Cloudflare offer rewrites that work this way.
Why it matters for your website
A reverse proxy can speed up your site with caching, add security filtering and spread traffic across servers. It also lets you run different apps under one domain, like a blog and a store. Setup mistakes can cause redirect loops or show visitors the wrong content.
Example
A marketing team hosts its main site on one platform and its blog on WordPress elsewhere. A reverse proxy serves the blog at /blog on the main domain, so it all looks like one site.
Tips
- Make sure HTTPS and redirects are set up consistently at the proxy and the origin.
- Pass the visitor's real IP address to your server so logs and security tools work.
- Clear the proxy cache after major content changes.
Common mistakes
- Creating redirect loops by forcing HTTPS in two places that disagree.
- Caching pages that should be private, like account or cart pages.
Questions about Reverse proxy
What is Reverse proxy?
A server that sits in front of your sites and forwards requests to the right place.
What is the difference between a proxy and a reverse proxy?
A forward proxy acts for visitors when they reach websites. A reverse proxy acts for the website, receiving requests and passing them to the right server.
Is a CDN a reverse proxy?
Many CDNs work as reverse proxies. They sit in front of your server, cache content near visitors and pass other requests back to your site.
