Programming Tutorials

  Cloudways is an exceptional Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) for PHP applications like WordPress or Laravel. However, deploying a modern Node.js application—specifically Next.js 14 with Server-Side Rendering (SSR)—on a platform architected for LAMP stacks introduces significant friction. If you have tried simply uploading your  .next  folder and hoping for the best, you likely encountered 404 errors, 502 Bad Gateway responses, or a static site that fails to hydrate. This guide details a production-grade deployment strategy. We will bypass the default Apache handling, implement a robust process manager (PM2), and configure a custom Nginx reverse proxy to serve Next.js 14 efficiently. The Architecture Gap: Why This Fails by Default To solve the deployment issue, you must understand the underlying architecture of a standard Cloudways server. Cloudways servers typically use a hybrid stack:  Nginx  (as a static cache/proxy) sits in front of  Apache  (which pr...