This is part of my solution to replicate pow(ruby script)/anvil(osx app) on linux. You can symlink folders to ~/.sites/blarg and then view content in the browser by going to blarg.dev. If you're using ruby or python you can also startup an app server(unicorn/gunicorn/others) listening to 8080. I use dnsmasq to send all *.dev domains to localhost.

local-dev.conf

upstream app_server {
  server localhost:8080 fail_timeout=0;
}

server {
  listen   80;
  server_name  "~^(?<base_dir>.+)\.dev$";

  access_log  /var/log/nginx/dev.access.log  main;
  error_log  /var/log/nginx/dev.error.log;

  location / {
    root   /home/jd/.sites/$base_dir/;
    index  index.html index.htm;
    try_files $uri/index.html $uri @app;
  }

  location @app {
    proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
    proxy_set_header Host $http_host;
    proxy_redirect off;
    proxy_pass http://app_server;
  }
}