Your blog should be rendered on the server

Alessandro Balzano

This blog post from Plausible just reminded me of a a pet peeve of mine: blogs that are built as single page applications. I don't like being greeted with a blank page because I don't want to execute whatever code you send to my browser.

There are several use cases for single page applications, but blogs are not one of them, for several reasons. Some of them are already explained in the article, and I'm going to reiterate them too, but I want to add a different perspective to the Plausible's short essay.

I just want to read content

A blog just contains text and some media (images, audio or video). We don't need to download some Javascript, then execute it to request the real content and then show it to the user - why can't I just download the content?

Another advantage is that you don't need to a lot of work to let search engines index your work. Do you think it is a non-issue? Hulu would like to have a word with you. Due to some problems with their client-side-only rendering, Google could not index them anymore, destroying Hulu's previous work on their targeted keywords.

I don't care about the tool you use to generate your blog, whether you build it on your laptop and push via FTP or use Wordpress to write and publish your new eessays - it's just fine, all those workflows are valid - they let your readers (me!) just get the content they want to read.

If you really need to build your entire website using javascript, then please, I beg you: setup Server-side Static Rendering (SSR) to create a static "base" version of the website. Most libraries/frameworks support SSR, so just study your framework's documentation and set it up.

Javascript should enhance the experience

I really love New York Times'-style interactive data visualizations: they are part of the content they want to show you, so it's OK to enable Javascript to enjoy those applets. Even New York Times articles, though, are just text that are enhanced by the interactive applets - you still get the text. It's ok to require Javascript to load comments - especially if you use third-party services such as Disqus - because, y'know, comments are not a core part of the experience.

So, please, stop forcing javascript on your blog readers. Just let me read your content.

I hope you liked this new issue of Interesting Links, a column where I highlight interesting articles, with my own comments and thoughts. If you appreciated this small rant, tell me that on Twitter, or support me on Ko-fi.