Can I host frontend and backend on the same EC2 instance?
Yes. Configure Nginx to serve static files from the React build directory for the root path, and proxy /api/ and /socket.io/ to the Node.js backend on port 3000. This works well for small to medium apps. For larger apps, separate them for independent scaling.
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More FAQs in Deploying a React App to EC2 with Nginx Serving the Frontend from the Same Server
Build the React app (npm run build), transfer the dist/ or build/ directory to EC2, configure Nginx with root pointing to the build directory and try_files $uri $uri/ /index.html for client-side routing. Proxy /api/ requests to the Node.js backend on port 3000.
try_files $uri $uri/ /index.html tells Nginx to fall back to index.html for any path that doesn't match a static file. Without this, navigating directly to /profile or /connections returns 404 because Nginx looks for a physical file at that path.
Add a location block matching file extensions (js, css, png, jpg, etc.) with expires 1y and Cache-Control 'public, immutable'. React build files have hashed names, so they can be cached aggressively the hash changes when content changes.
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