Server-Side Rendering
Understanding where the HTML content is generated.
Server-side rendering (SSR)
Server-side rendering is the process of rendering an application on the server to send HTML, rather than JavaScript, to the client. When the server generates the HTML content for a page, the page is considered server-side rendered.
Server-side rendering was the original method of delivering web content long before the term "SSR" was coined. The term only came into common use once JavaScript became capable of running on both the browser and the server.
This has been the traditional model for serving content since the 1990s. Generally, server-side rendered pages achieve a faster First Contentful Paint (FCP) —the point at which requested content becomes visible in the browser during the initial load.
Every time a new request is received, the server generates and delivers the HTML content. This process can be handled by various languages and frameworks, such as .NET, Java, PHP, or Node.js (JavaScript), and often involves fetching data from an external API.
In contrast to client-side rendering, which requires the browser to load and execute JavaScript before displaying content, SSR provides users with a fully formed HTML page immediately. This approach also results in significantly better Search Engine Optimization (SEO), as web crawlers can easily read the pre-rendered content.