3

I have Backbone powered single page app. App consists of couple of files:

index.html
javascripts/app.js
javascripts/vendor.js
stylesheets/app.css
images/ -> image assets

I want to add prerender.io service to my app to make it SEO-friendly. The easiest way of doing this for me is to use express.js hosted on heroku:

var express = require('express');
var app = express();
app.use(require('prerender-node').set('prerenderToken', 'YOUR_TOKEN'));
// ...
app.listen(process.env.PORT || 5000);

But maybe express or actually node are not best for serving static files? Maybe heroku isn't best for serving static files? What will be best solution? What do you recommend?

user606521
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2 Answers2

10

See this StackOverflow question for serving static files through expressjs: static files with express.js

You should be able to use Heroku's free dyno to handle a good bit of traffic since you're only serving static files.

I would suggest putting all of those files/folder in a "public/" directory and using this code:

var express = require('express'); 
var app = express();
app.use(express.static(__dirname + '/public'));

app.listen(process.env.PORT || 3000);
Community
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Prerender.io
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2

You better use CDN for serving static files like Amazon S3.

Maxo
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  • But I have to "catch" all google-spider request for example and redirect them to prerender.io. So request sequence should be -> `myapp.com => (server) => CDN:index.html` - is it possible? The problem is that I have to "catch" all requests in (server) step to redirect them to `prerender.io` if needed... – user606521 Mar 10 '14 at 11:14