Three myths about server-side rendering

The gap between knowing this and actually doing it is where most teams lose ground. A few things about server-side rendering that get repeated more often than they get checked.

The question is rarely whether something can be built, but what it costs to keep running afterwards. If two people in the business would answer this differently, that gap is the actual problem.

“It only matters for big sites”

Rendering on the server gets content in front of people sooner. This is the sort of thing that compounds, quietly, in both directions. It rarely shows up as a line item, which is exactly why it slips.

“We can deal with it after launch”

Sometimes true, usually expensive. There is a version of this that is over-engineered, and it is worth avoiding.

“Our platform handles it”

It adds infrastructure, so only pay for it when you need it. None of that requires a large budget, only a decision and someone to own it. If two people in the business would answer this differently, that gap is the actual problem.

What this looks like day to day

Code gets read far more often than it gets written, and usually by someone with less context than the author had. Three things worth confirming about server-side rendering before you move on:

• Someone can say what the current setup is without going to look
• Rendering on the server gets content in front of people sooner — and you know whether that is true here
• There is a way to tell whether the last change to this helped

Pick the one that would hurt most if it failed, and start there.