Using serverless renders as a fallback for static pages

I recently wrote up an experiment on CSS-Tricks which goes into some detail about this technique. The intention is to use a serverless functions to perform a server-side serverless(!) render of a page as a custom 404 handler.

This is useful if you are generating your site from content in a decoupled content management system or database. Or if you are gathering and serving user generated content. I’m collecting content from users via a form, and storing it in a database with FaunaDB.

The result gives you:

  • a static/pre-generated site
  • instant access to new pages created from user contributions
  • serverless render as a fallback via 404
  • no client-side rendering or js dependencies.

The example site is here:
https://vlolly.net

The code is all open source and available to explore here:

And the detailed explanation and walkthrough is on css-tricks here:

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