Web servers, and researching alternatives

My history with web servers is entirely unremarkable, and likely mirrors yours. I first ran Apache/httpd when I was kid, before moving onto lighttpd in my first paid gig—lighty for those in the know—then onto nginx where I’ve mostly remained since, save for running Bozotic on a 486 with NetBSD because of course. Also IIS for a project, but we don’t speak of that. nginx is great web server and reverse proxy. It’s fast, sips system resources like its 2026 and Moore’s Law has been flipped upside down, and has wide industry support. The latter is important for two reasons: Tooling like certbot can integrate and orchestrate it automatically. Most web software you’ll ever want to run either supports nginx, or has example config you can use. The latter is important to me, because… my brain stubbornly refuses to grok its syntax. I understand conceptually why it’s structured and written the way it is, but it’s always felt like I’m fighting against it. It routinely requires requires multiple…