> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.fly.io/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Run an NGINX proxy on Fly

<Warning>
  **Warning: This document is old! It is likely wrong in some important way.**
</Warning>

Everything starts with a Fly app on Fly. If you already have an application running somewhere else, and want to get some of the benefits of running it close to users, you can launch a proxy app on Fly. This will forward requests to your *origin* application for processing.

### Configuring NGINX

NGINX is a powerful HTTP proxy server you can use to direct traffic to its appropriate destination, apply routing rules, or even implement caching. We start with a Dockerfile that'll allow us to create a NGINX image with our own `nginx.conf` configuration file:

```
FROM nginx
COPY nginx.conf /etc/nginx/conf.d/nginx.conf
```

That's it. It copies a local configuration file into the image. In this example config, we want to proxy requests from example.com to realexample.com and proxy requests from exemplum.com to realexemplum.com.

```
server {
  listen 8080;
  listen [::]:8080;

  server_name example.com;

  location / {
      proxy_pass https://realexample.com/;
      proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Host $http_host;
  }
}

server {
  listen 8080;
  listen [::]:8080;

  server_name exemplum.com;

  location / {
      proxy_pass https://realexemplum.com/;
      proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Host $http_host;
  }
}
```

Both server sections are set to listen on port 8080. The `server_name` directive says which hostname the server directive will be handling and the `location` directive uses `proxy_pass` to send all requests on to the appropriate site.

### Deploying NGINX to Fly

We now need to create a slot for our new Fly app. Assuming you are signed up and logged in (if not see our [hands-on for getting started](/getting-started/launch-demo)), then we'll run this:

```bash theme={null}
flyctl apps create
```

This command will prompt us for an app name - we'll use `nginxproxy` but we recommend you use the autogenerated name to ensure a unique name. As well as creating the slot for the app in the Fly infrastructure, a `fly.toml` file will be created with the app name and configuration settings in it. To deploy our NGINX, we literally issue the deploy command:

```bash theme={null}
flyctl deploy
```

Our app will now be built and deployed onto the Fly infrastructure. When that's complete, get the status of the application with `flyctl status`. You'll see it has a hostname which you can use to connect. The host name will match none of the hosts in the `nginx.conf` file and so it will proxy for the default server - the first server listed in that configuration file.

### Choose your own adventure

With the proxy app in place, you now have a foundation for adding features "at the edge". Maybe try HTTP caching in NGINX, or look at our [OpenResty guide and learn to write Lua](/app-guides/openresty-nginx-plus-lua). Or if you're feeling extra spicy, let your customers [add their own domains](/networking/custom-domain) to your application.