Can someone explain the key differences between a proxy and reverse proxy? or When should you use a p

OP here—thanks everyone! This makes way more sense now. Didn’t realize how much reverse proxies do for security (SSL termination especially).

Quick follow-up: For a small personal project, would you still recommend a reverse proxy like Nginx, or is that overkill? Also, any gotchas when setting one up?

(And yeah, the naming *is* confusing—wish they called it "server proxy" or something lol.)