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Sam Vloeberghs for Angular

Posted on • Edited on

Applications or websites build with Angular Universal

I've been using Angular Universal for my blog and personal website since I first learned about the technology in October 2016!

What websites have you built using Angular and more specifically Universal? What challenges did you face? How do you like it so far?

For those who haven't heard about it yet, Angular Universal is a specific technology allowing Angular applications to be rendered on the server. This gives you some major benefits, like

  • better performance and load times
  • better SEO and support for crawlers
  • and many more..

Read more about it here and here. Fire away if you have specific questions!

Top comments (9)

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wlun001 profile image
Wei Lun

Hi Sam,
I have one question. If you build with Angular Universal, is it the whole application will be server rendered?
Or just render during the time bootstrap, and javascript will take place after fully load.

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samvloeberghs profile image
Sam Vloeberghs • Edited

It's not mandatory to render the complete page of the application on the server, nor is it required to render the complete list of pages on the server.

Some things don't necessary require a server side render. For example: if you are server side rendering for SEO purposes it's only necessary to render the publicly available pages, or the publicly available parts of your pages.

Google will, for example, not login on your authentication functionality when it's crawling your page. Therefor, in respect to that specific requirement, it has no added value to server side render personalized content that you would only show when authenticated

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wlun001 profile image
Wei Lun

So we can choose which page to use server side render?
It that is the case, do we need two deployments? one for static hosting, another for server side rendering

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samvloeberghs profile image
Sam Vloeberghs

Correct, you can! Only one deployment is needed. In your server side logic it's perfectly possible to choose which pages can and should be prerended and which not.

I can put together an example if you'd like, but that will require me some time :)

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wlun001 profile image
Wei Lun • Edited

That's great. I was planning to opt in SSR for my website. Thanks for the answer. If you have the time luxury I would love to have an example 😁

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samvloeberghs profile image
Sam Vloeberghs • Edited

Hi there. I've devoted some extra time in my new blogpost to your specific question.

You can find it here: samvloeberghs.be/posts/creating-a-...

The answer to your question is in the second-last section of the page: "Server-side render only specific pages". I will cross post this asap to dev.to Crossposted here: dev.to/angular/creating-a-simple-m...

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wlun001 profile image
Wei Lun

This is awesome! thanks a lot

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jd4no profile image
Joey Defourneaux

Hey Sam. Do you have any examples of how you use angular for your blog? What is your process for storing/rendering your MD, rendering your list page vs post page? I would love to see a post about how you are doing this.

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samvloeberghs profile image
Sam Vloeberghs

I can write about those specific questions, but it will require time.

Meanwhile please check the repo: github.com/samvloeberghs/kwerri-os...

I don't use MD myself, I prefer full HTML as you can see here: github.com/samvloeberghs/kwerri-os...

How I load my posts and generate them can be found in the posts components, here: github.com/samvloeberghs/kwerri-os...

Hope this can help you out somehow :)