Remember when server-side rendering was just rendering?
php
dev.to
Ahnii! Somewhere around 2016, "server-side rendering" stopped meaning "the server renders HTML." It started meaning "run your JavaScript framework on the server so it can produce the HTML that the browser will then throw away and rebuild." The industry just forgot what to call it after React came along. Waaseyaa's SSR package does the original thing. A request comes in. PHP resolves a template. Twig renders HTML. The server sends it back. No hydration step, no virtual DOM diffing, no 200MB nod