I was using the Yeoman Marionette Generator to make a site. Node.js serves as an API server, socketIO tool, and serves the index. Nginx handles the static assets. This configuration seems to work okay with the architecture...

nginx.conf

#user  nobody;
worker_processes  1;

error_log  logs/error.log;

events {
    worker_connections  1024;
}

http {
    include     mime.types;
    access_log  logs/access.log;
    
    #gzip compression
    gzip on;
    gzip_comp_level 6;
    gzip_vary on;
    gzip_min_length  1000;
    gzip_proxied any;
    gzip_types text/plain text/css application/json application/x-javascript text/xml application/xml application/xml+rss text/javascript;
    gzip_buffers 16 8k;

    #Proxy for blog
    upstream blogv2_upstream {
      server 127.0.0.1:5000;
      keepalive 64;
    }

    server {
        listen 8080;
        server_name localhost;
        
        #location / {
        #    proxy_redirect off;
        #    proxy_set_header   X-Real-IP            $remote_addr;
        #    proxy_set_header   X-Forwarded-For  $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
        #    proxy_set_header   Host                   $http_host;
        #    proxy_set_header   X-NginX-Proxy    true;
        #    proxy_set_header   Connection "";
        #    proxy_http_version 1.1;
        #    proxy_pass         http://blogv2_upstream;
        #    #root /data/www;
        #}

        location / {
            proxy_redirect off;
            proxy_set_header   X-Real-IP            $remote_addr;
            proxy_set_header   X-Forwarded-For  $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
            proxy_set_header   Host                   $http_host;
            proxy_set_header   X-NginX-Proxy    true;
            proxy_set_header   Connection "";
            proxy_http_version 1.1;
            root /Users/arlando/blogv2/blogv2/dist;
        }

        #proxy to Node's socket
        location /socket.io/ {
            proxy_pass         http://blogv2_upstream;
            proxy_http_version 1.1;
            proxy_set_header   Upgrade $http_upgrade;
            proxy_set_header   Connection "upgrade";
        }

        #proxy to our API
        location /api/v1/ {
            proxy_pass         http://blogv2_upstream;
            proxy_http_version 1.1;
        }

        location ~ ^/(styles/|scripts/|bower_components/|images/|robots.txt|humans.txt|favicon.ico) {
          root /Users/arlando/blogv2/blogv2/dist;
          access_log off;
          expires max;
        }
    }
}