Shiny Server host static markdown output, display directory - r-markdown

Question

This is two separate questions that I am asking together because I think they might be related to each other.
First, is it possible to get shiny server to host .html files? specifically the output of rmarkdown. I would like to host a combination of static markdown results and interactive markdown. I know this can be done because of the special index.html file, which works just fine. However if I try any other .html file I get Not Found. (eg: :3838/Project/example.html)
For the static file, I can host the .Rmd file with no issues, but it is compiled new every time I visit it, and in this case it has about a 5 minute runtime. I would like to run it once and host the results. (yes, I could run the time consuming code separately and save those results as an rdata file to be loaded but that seems like a sub optimal solution)
The second issue is when I open a directory (:3838/Project/) and there is no index.html file in it I get Not Found rather than the directory of applications.
here is my shiny-server.conf file. (I have set shiny up to run in a home directory owned by shiny and the shinyusr group rather than in the default srv directory)
# Instruct Shiny Server to run applications as the user "shiny"
run_as shiny;
# Define a server that listens on port 3838
server {
listen 3838;
# Define a location at the base URL
location / {
# Host the directory of Shiny Apps stored in this directory
#site_dir /srv/shiny-server;
site_dir /home/shiny/apps;
# Log all Shiny output to files in this directory
#log_dir /var/log/shiny-server;
log_dir /home/shiny/logs;
# When a user visits the base URL rather than a particular application,
# an index of the applications available in this directory will be shown.
directory_index on;
}
}