Nginx Enable HTTPS/SSL when forwarding to other URL - ssl

Question

Currently, I'm working with an AWS Ubuntu EC2 instance, running a Node.js app on port 3000, that has an Nginx reverse proxy. I have been trying to enable HTTPS and add a SSL certificate and I've been successful in that I don't get any errors in the nginx.conf file. However, I am redirecting my main website, "example.com" to the public DNS of the AWS server and when I try to load the "http://example.com" or "https://example.com" page, I get a "Unable to Connect" error from Firefox, which is my testing browser. Also when I run sudo nginx -t, there are no syntactical errors in the configuration file and when I check the /var/log/nginx/error.log file it is empty. Below is my current nginx.conf file.
Update: I changed server_name from example.com to the public DNS of my server, lets call it amazonaws.com. Now, when I type in https://amazonaws.com the page loads and the SSL certificate shows up when running the website through ssllabs.com. However, when I type in amazonaws.com or http://amazonaws.com I get a blank page like before.
user root;
worker_processes 1;
error_log /var/log/nginx/error.log;
pid /var/run/nginx.pid;
events {
# max_clients = worker_processes * worker_connections / 4
worker_connections 1024;
}
http {
include mime.types;
default_type application/octet-stream;
sendfile on;
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;
# backend applications
upstream nodes {
server 127.0.0.1:3000;
keepalive 64;
}
server {
listen 80;
return 301 https://$host$request_uri;
}
server {
listen 443 ssl;
ssl_certificate /etc/nginx/ssl/example_com.crt;
ssl_certificate_key /etc/nginx/ssl/example_com.key;
ssl_protocols SSLv3 TLSv1;
ssl_ciphers HIGH:!aNULL:!MD5;
server_name example.com;
# everything else goes to backend node apps
location / {
proxy_pass http://nodes;
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 X-Forwarded-Proto $scheme;
proxy_set_header Host $host;
proxy_set_header X-NginX-Proxy true;
proxy_set_header Connection "";
proxy_http_version 1.1;
}
}
}

Answer 1

You should give this server definition
server {
listen 80;
return 301 https://$host$request_uri;
}
a server_name (eg amazonaws.com) as well.