I moved the default "hello.js" files in an archive folder and moved my React App build in the var/www/html folder but I see no changes

Question

I followed the steps Sammy the shark showed me regarding the “Get your code on here” section of the default landing page

Launch your app by calling pm2 start <your-file>, then map the port your app runs on to an HTTP URL by running nano /etc/nginx/sites-available/default and adding another location. Use the existing entry for the port 3000 “hello” app as a basis.

Call sudo systemctl restart nginx to enable your new nginx config.
Call pm2 save to schedule your code to run at launch.

I expected to at least see an error message because I moved the “hello.js” and “index.nginx-debian.html” files into another directory but I still see the “Sammy welcomes you to your droplet” page when I visit my domain.

here is what my /var/www/html/archive directory looks like (where I moved the old files) image alt text

and here is what’s in my /var/www/html/ directory (populated with my react app build files)

and this is my default “sites-available” file. I left it unchanged since I didn’t need to change the destination it was pointing to

I’m very new at this and I’m learning a lot about how a website is hosted and served. But I’m not sure if I did something wrong or if I missed a step.

How is my domain still loading the default digitalocean landing page when I moved it to another directory? and why are my new react app build’s index.html file not being detected?

(my droplet is running Node JS on Ubuntu 20.04)

Bobby Iliev · Answer

Hey there 👋

Quick check, are you trying to serve a React static site or are you running a full Node.js backend too?

If it’s just a React frontend (like after npm run build), you don’t need PM2 or a Node process running. You can just let Nginx serve the static files directly from /var/www/html. Running the React dev server in production is not recommended.

Make sure your Nginx config has something like:

location / {
    root /var/www/html;
    index index.html;
    try_files $uri $uri/ /index.html;
}

Then restart Nginx:

sudo systemctl restart nginx

If you’re using a Node backend (like Express or Vite SSR), that’s when PM2 and the proxy_pass setup to port 3000 makes sense.

Let me know how it goes!

- Bobby

Question

I moved the default "hello.js" files in an archive folder and moved my React App build in the var/www/html folder but I see no changes

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