Signs it is time to revisit server-side rendering
There is no clever trick in this one, just a handful of decisions worth making deliberately. A few signals that server-side rendering is due some attention.
The question is rarely whether something can be built, but what it costs to keep running afterwards. It rarely shows up as a line item, which is exactly why it slips.
The signals
- Nobody can say when it was last reviewed
- The answer depends on who you ask
- Rendering on the server gets content in front of people sooner
- Crawlers see finished HTML instead of an empty shell
Where to start
It adds infrastructure, so only pay for it when you need it. The reasoning matters more than the rule, because the rule has exceptions. Write the reasoning down alongside the decision, because the reasoning is what changes first.
In practice
Most development decisions are really maintenance decisions wearing a different hat. Three things worth confirming about server-side rendering before you move on:
- Someone can say what the current setup is without going to look
- Crawlers see finished HTML instead of an empty shell — and you know whether that is true here
- There is a way to tell whether the last change to this helped
If you are not sure where your systems currently stand on this, it takes us about an hour to find out.