Forward proxy vs. reverse proxy – what's the difference and when should you use each? Alternatively:

OP here—holy crap, thanks y’all! This makes so much more sense now.

Didn’t realize reverse proxies were behind stuff like Cloudflare. Gonna play around with Nginx this weekend.

Quick follow-up: Any gotchas when setting up a reverse proxy for a small site? Like, does it slow things down if not tuned right?