Setting up Apache Proxy to Serve Node Application

by AJ Meyghani

Set up proxy

Install build essentials then:

aptitude install -y libapache2-mod-proxy-html libxml2-dev

Enable apache modules:

a2enmod

Then it will ask you for the names of the modules that you want to enable:

proxy proxy_ajp proxy_http rewrite deflate headers proxy_balancer proxy_connect proxy_html

Then your vhost file will look like this:

<VirtualHost *:80>
   ServerAdmin web@domain.com
   ServerName domain.com
   ServerAlias www.domain.com
   ProxyRequests off
   ProxyPass / http://localhost:2368/
   ProxyPassReverse / http://localhost:2368/  
   # DocumentRoot /srv/www/domain.com/public_html/
   # ErrorLog /srv/www/domain.com/logs/error.log
   # CustomLog /srv/www/domain.com/logs/access.log combined
</VirtualHost>

Load balancing

https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-use-apache-http-server-as-reverse-proxy-using-mod_proxy-extension

Running ghost forever

http://support.ghost.org/deploying-ghost/

To install forever type npm install forever -g

To start Ghost using forever from the Ghost installation directory type NODE_ENV=production forever start index.js

To stop Ghost type forever stop index.js

To check if Ghost is currently running type forever list