this post was submitted on 01 Sep 2023
64 points (93.2% liked)
Programming
17669 readers
187 users here now
Welcome to the main community in programming.dev! Feel free to post anything relating to programming here!
Cross posting is strongly encouraged in the instance. If you feel your post or another person's post makes sense in another community cross post into it.
Hope you enjoy the instance!
Rules
Rules
- Follow the programming.dev instance rules
- Keep content related to programming in some way
- If you're posting long videos try to add in some form of tldr for those who don't want to watch videos
Wormhole
Follow the wormhole through a path of communities [email protected]
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
If SEO matters beyond a couple landing pages, I find it unlikely that you would be developing a rich web app with that much reactivity. You are more likely content focused, in which case a static site generator or simpler SSR frameworks are easier and fit the use case much better. Even from a performance perspective, why ship the entire react run time if you do not need it?
And on the other hand, if you are developing a rich web app with a lot of interactivity, then do you really need SEO beyond a couple (or one) landing pages? You should develop the web app in React CSR and build the landing pages as static sites to optimize SEO. That is a lot easier to me.
The biggest issue is flexibility. What if you don't know if a page is going to need SEO or rich client side functionality when you build it, but then it does later? Do you want to rewrite the page from scratch every time that happens? This is especially true when you're trying to maximize productivity for junior devs on a large team. Are all devs working on the site knowledgeable enough to make the static site vs CSR call correctly when they first start working on every new page? Wouldn't a "Use framework X and we'll figure that part out later" approach be easier for everyone?
Also, what about pages that need both SEO and rich client side functionality. You can choose to limit yourself to only one or the other on any given page, OR you could use hydration to have your cake and eat it too. Maybe react or vue isn't the right abstraction, but if we can come up with a strong enough abstraction, hydration is a really useful general purpose pattern.
I suppose I just cannot imagine a situation where a rich interactive web app needs SEO that is not solved by having a separate landing page (and such solution not being way better and less effort than alternatives).
React has enough flexibility to be added later on to a project and not take over the entire web page, but only the parts it manages. It can act as a separate island or series of connected islands. So if you start thinking you dont need react but then later decide you want to add it to your non-react site, it should still be easily doable.
There are many scenarios you'd want seo and a csr. Let's say you want a media player. Tons of interactivity, and lots of content. A landing page isn't going to cut it.
But that's the beauty of a framework like nuxt or next - you don't have to choose. You can have your cake and eat it too so to speak.