A single-file Python Flask application that turns a directory of images into a responsive thumbnail grid with a lightbox. No database, no CMS, no build step — point it at a folder and go. Thumbnails generate once with Pillow and cache to disk. Built on the same systemd, Gunicorn, and Nginx reverse-proxy pattern covered in the Flask guide.
Nginx doesn't care what's on the other end of proxy_pass. A real Flask app — log monitoring, systemd service management, and permission debugging — demonstrates the pattern that works for any backend language.
Serve a WordPress site from a home server through a lightweight VPS proxy — static assets mirrored to the VPS disk, dynamic requests proxied over Tailscale, and every database query running at local NVMe latency. A playground project that turned out well enough to document.
Convert images to WebP on disk with cwebp, let nginx serve the right format based on the browser's Accept header, and leave WordPress completely out of it. No plugins, no exec(), no database changes.
Nginx is at its fastest when there's no backend to talk to. A complete guide to serving static sites — clean URLs, pre-compressed assets, aggressive caching, and security headers you can actually lock down.
Set up Nginx's GeoIP module for country detection without recompiling — modern database sources, country-based routing, access control, and passing location data to PHP.