Nginx still displays default `index.html` after symbolic link removed from `sites-enabled`

(This is mostly comment but space limited)

Why is this?

We have no idea.

You could check your nginx log files to see if the reload was successful. To see if your requests are actually being handled by the webserver you think this is coming from.

You didn’t tell us what other configs exist on the site. “/etc/nginx/sites-enabled” implies the Debian-type configuration – but you didn’t tell us the provenance of the configuration nor the platform it sits on. Did you check from the root configuration file (nginx.conf) that site configurations are only being loaded from this location?

You could try changing the content of the page which allow you to rule out caching issues outside of the webserver, DNS misconfiguration and routing issues.

You could check any other site configurations to see if they are poitning at the same root.

You could try re-implementing the default website pointing to a different root / content.