How to deploy React frontend application in nodejs-type page?

treblide

Hi everyone,
Following the documentation, I was able to set up a website which uses nodejs. It is intended to showcase a full-stack web application that I'm currently developing. First I want to deploy my react-based frontend (which eventually will be connected to express-framework-based backend). However, I am stuck at deploying the react application.

I placed the entry file index.js and the relevant modules and files inside the public_nodejs directory. I also installed the necessary dependency modules using npm install. I have two questions:

When someone visits the url, nothing appears on the web page. I expected to see the contents of index.js, which contains app.js and other modules. What should I do such that when someone visits the url subdomain.domain.com, the servers serves the requests correctly?
Then I thought I am supposed to run the react application on the server in order to serve web pages correctly. So, I tried to run the react application by executing npm run start at the public_nodejs directory. But I encountered the following error:

(node:79600) [DEP_WEBPACK_DEV_SERVER_ON_AFTER_SETUP_MIDDLEWARE] DeprecationWarning: 'onAfterSetupMiddleware' option is deprecated. Please use the 'setupMiddlewares' option.
(Use `node --trace-deprecation ...` to show where the warning was created)
(node:79600) [DEP_WEBPACK_DEV_SERVER_ON_BEFORE_SETUP_MIDDLEWARE] DeprecationWarning: 'onBeforeSetupMiddleware' option is deprecated. Please use the 'setupMiddlewares' option.
/usr/home/treblide/domains/i3wd.treblide.com/public_nodejs/node_modules/webpack-dev-server/lib/Server.js:2557
        throw error;
        ^

Error: listen EPERM: operation not permitted 0.0.0.0:40581

Could you clarify why this happened?

Lastly, I would like to know how to configure the ngix server (the server on serv00.com) and the nodejs such that the routing mechanisms function correctly?

Thanks for reading my post!
I look forward to reading your answers!

admin

treblide

Our Nginx/Passenger will run the app.js file during the first page visit.
If you want you can make a port reservation and run your own server (e.g. npm run start + setup proxy) if you want but using the automatic way of Passenger is much easier.
https://docs.serv00.com/Port_reservation/
https://docs.serv00.com/WWW/#proxy
You don't need to configure anything on the server side - just run your application where you can set your routing: https://expressjs.com/en/guide/routing.html

cloverdev It's not related to Node.js applications.

cloverdev

See this.

treblide

admin Thank you very much for your response. It has been a while since I revisited the thread.
I have the following basic setup. I created and configured the domain (anatomy.treblide.com) in serv00.com web panel and created a WWW page of type nodejs. All good so far!
When checking the directory structure of the nodejs application through SSH CLI, two folders (public and tmp) have been created under the path /home/username/domains/anatomy.treblide.com/public_nodejs/ .
When calling https://anatomy.treblide.com from the browser, the website loads the default template index.html.
I built my React-based frontend app locally in my system and transferred the (build) static files under public folder. Now, when visiting the domain anatomy.treblide.com correctly loads the frontend app.
I have trouble with setting the nodejs backend. I still use express.js. I placed all my backend source code including the necessary node module dependencies under /home/username/domains/anatomy.treblide.com/public_nodejs/. So, my app.js is now located under public_nodejs. For simplicity, I have the following content in my app.js:

/* Import module dependencies.  */
const express = require("express");
const path = require("path");
const cors = require("cors");

/* Import routes.  */
const rootRouter = require("./routes/root.router.index");
const userRouter = require("./routes/user.router.index");

// Start application
const app = express();

// Set view engine
app.set("view engine", "ejs");
app.set("views", path.join(__dirname, "./views"));

/* Setup middlewares globally.  */
app.use(express.json())
app.use(express.urlencoded({extended: false}));
app.use(cors())


/* Setup routes.  */
app.use("/", rootRouter);
app.use("/user", userRouter);

// TEST if the backend is woring
app.get('/logtest', (req, res) => {
  res.send(`
    <!DOCTYPE html>
    <html>
    <head>
      <title>Log Test</title>
    </head>
    <body>
      <h1>Hello from /logtest</h1>
      <p>This page was sent directly from the Express backend.</p>
    </body>
    </html>
  `);
});
module.exports = app;

I have the following questions:

For simplicity, I added a testing route named /logtest. when visiting https://anatomy.treblide.com/logtest in the browser, the website keeps loading and after some time it returns nothing. But I expect to see a webpage sent from the backend.
Do I need to configure the Phusion Passenger to run the backend app ? If so, how? Could tell me how to run or point the Phusion Passenger to my app.js?

I tried starting the passenger by typing passenger start in the ssh terminal, but I get the error log:

The Phusion Passenger(R) agent is already installed.

 --> Installing Nginx 1.26.0 engine
     Could not download https://github.com/phusion/passenger/releases/download/release-6.0.22/nginx-1.26.0-x86_64-freebsd.tar.gz: The requested URL returned error: 404
     Trying next mirror...
     Could not download https://oss-binaries.phusionpassenger.com/binaries/passenger/by_release/6.0.22/nginx-1.26.0-x86_64-freebsd.tar.gz: The requested URL returned error: 404
     Trying next mirror...
     Could not download https://s3.amazonaws.com/phusion-passenger/binaries/passenger/by_release/6.0.22/nginx-1.26.0-x86_64-freebsd.tar.gz: The requested URL returned error: 403
     ------------------------------------------
     Sorry, no precompiled Nginx 1.26.0 engine is available for your platform.

---------------------------------------

No precompiled Nginx engine could be downloaded. Compiling it from source instead.

Checking for required software...

 * Checking for C compiler...
      Found: yes
      Location: /usr/bin/cc
 * Checking for C++ compiler...
      Found: yes
      Location: /usr/bin/c++
 * Checking for GNU make...
      Found: yes
      Location: /usr/local/bin/gmake
 * Checking for Rake (associated with /usr/local/bin/ruby33)...
      Found: yes
      Location: /usr/local/bin/ruby33 /usr/local/bin/rake
 * Checking for OpenSSL development headers...
      Found: yes
      Location: /usr/include/openssl/ssl.h
 * Checking for Zlib development headers...
      Found: yes
      Location: /usr/include/zlib.h
 * Checking for PCRE2 development headers...
      Found: no

Some required software is not installed.
But don't worry, this installer will tell you how to install them.
Press Enter to continue, or Ctrl-C to abort.

--------------------------------------------

Installation instructions for required software

 * To install PCRE2 development headers:
   Please download it from http://www.pcre.org/

If the aforementioned instructions didn't solve your problem, then please take
a look at our documentation for troubleshooting tips:

  https://www.phusionpassenger.com/library/install/standalone/
  https://www.phusionpassenger.com/library/admin/standalone/troubleshooting/

treblide

treblide Just a follow up to above message. I made sure all the node module dependencies are met. My package.json looks like this:

{
  "name": "interactive-3d-web-design-backend",
  "version": "1.0.0",
  "description": "",
  "main": "./app.js",
  "scripts": {
    "start": "node ./app.js",
    "test": "jest --runInBand --detectOpenHandles"
  },
...
}

I checked if Phusion Passenger is running by typing in my SSH, ps -aux | grep Passenger, and it returns

username 98883  0.0  0.0 730772 88780  -  I    12:26   0:01.46 node22: Passenger NodeApp: /usr/home/username/domains/anatomy.treblide.com/public_nodejs (node)

So, this indicates that the backend is running, but somehow the webserver does not send any response to the client's browser (timeout error, Error code 524).
The server log says

2a00:8a60:c000:1:a3f3:51d2:afe7:adc8 - - [01/Jul/2025:12:48:46 +0200] "GET / HTTP/2.0" 499 0 "-" "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/138.0.0.0 Safari/537.36"

treblide

Okay, I seem to have fixed the issue by following the basic example provided in the www->nodejs documentation. Now, the web app seems to be working🙂