My nginx config for development. I use this in a vagrant vm (ubuntu), to proxy to the django development server (which runs on port 8888). Based on http://www.peterbe.com/plog/local-django-development-with-nginx

dev.conf

server {
  listen 8000;
  root /vagrant/MY_PROJECT/static;

  # My vm's host name is 'appserver'
  server_name appserver;
  access_log  /var/log/nginx/access.log;
  gzip off;
  
  location /static {
    alias /vagrant/MY_PROJECT/static;
  }
  
  proxy_set_header Host $http_host;
  location / {
     if (!-f $request_filename) {
         proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:8888;
         add_header X-Static miss;
     }
  }
}