I did not touch those settings as it is my understanding that Forge sets up all of the needed config settings for nginx to work with a laravel project.
If that is not the case, I see nothing in any instructions on the site for doing so.
If you tried to reach the site by the IP address, that would normally have been handled by the default site. Since you deleted it, it is handled by the catch-all nginx config which returns a 404.
I am fairly new to configuring servers and web servers, hence why I decided to go with Forge since it makes the process SO much easier. Still learning the in's and out's of it clearly.
Might have to finish making my dev server for testing and see what the default nginx config file shows compared to the one I set up for the client. Makes sense that those files would be different - I just assumed Forge would make the necessary adjustments to reach a site via the domain name AND the IP, but maybe I am wrong.
Either way, it's working and I appreciate both of you jumping in with trying to help.