Server-Side Rendering
Server-Side Rendering (SSR) is a web development technique where the server generates the full HTML content of a web page in response to a user request, sending it to the client's browser for immediate display. This contrasts with client-side rendering, where the browser downloads minimal HTML and uses JavaScript to build the page dynamically. SSR improves initial page load performance, enhances SEO by providing crawlers with fully rendered content, and ensures better user experience on slower networks or devices.
Developers should use SSR when building applications that require fast initial page loads, strong SEO performance, or accessibility on low-powered devices, such as e-commerce sites, content-heavy platforms, or news websites. It is particularly valuable in frameworks like Next.js or Nuxt.js, where it can be combined with static site generation for hybrid approaches. SSR reduces the time to first meaningful paint and ensures content is immediately available to users and search engines.