TwoDo CMS: introducing hybrid rendering

A search engine may never run the JavaScript on your page – and what it cannot see, it will not index. In July 2023 we were among the first in the world to adopt the new server-side rendering (SSR) in Angular 16.

Two ways to render a website

Broadly speaking, websites are rendered in one of two ways:

• On the client side. JavaScript in the browser creates and updates the content. That can be a problem for SEO: search engines may not be able to run the JavaScript, or understand dynamic content that changes with user interaction. The content may then go unindexed or be ranked poorly.

• On the server side. The content is visible and readable for search engines. They can easily crawl and index the HTML, which helps rankings and visibility. Visitors also see the content sooner, because they do not have to wait for JavaScript to download and run.

The best of both worlds

We did not want to sacrifice the interactivity and dynamism of the user interface, though. So we chose hybrid rendering on the server side in the Angular framework. It works in two steps:

1. We render every part of the page on the server and send it to the browser as static HTML. Search engines can see it, and the page appears quickly on first load.

2. The browser then downloads JavaScript from the server, which ‘hydrates’ the page – adding event handling and interactivity.

With hybrid rendering, we optimise performance and SEO without compromising the user experience.

What our customers get

Our customers can use the latest technology released by the world’s leading players from day one. The whole setup also benefits from the modern infrastructure of Cloudflare, which we use for additional caching and security.

Would you like to see hybrid rendering in TwoDo CMS in practice? Get in touch and we will show you how it would work on your website.