# SSR, redirects, and protected files

**URL:** <https://forum.hercules.app/t/ssr-redirects-and-protected-files/960>\
**Category:** Feature Requests\
**Created:** [September 19, 2026, 1:53am UTC](https://forum.hercules.app/t/ssr-redirects-and-protected-files/960 "2026-09-19T01:53:39Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Ashok\_Arsh](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex022/user_avatar/forum.hercules.app/ashok_arsh/32/1062_2.png) [@Ashok\_Arsh](https://forum.hercules.app/u/Ashok_Arsh)\
**Post date:** [September 19, 2026, 1:53am UTC](https://forum.hercules.app/t/ssr-redirects-and-protected-files/960/1 "2026-09-19T01:53:39Z")

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Here’s what I’d raise, ordered by impact. Each is grounded in something measurable from your site.

## 1. Server-side rendering or a prerender step

The biggest one. PageSpeed measures LCP 10.4s on your homepage with **element render delay of 2,770ms** and 2,492ms of bundle execution. Nothing paints until the JS runs.

It also causes three separate problems: every URL serves identical HTML with `<link rel="canonical">` pointing at `/`, social and AI crawlers that don’t run JS see homepage content on every page, and you’re hand-maintaining a `<noscript>` block as a workaround.

Ask: SSR, or static prerendering at build time for public routes.

## 2. Server-side redirects

`/contact-us/` can’t get a 301. React Router’s `<Navigate>` returns HTTP 200 to Googlebot, so the duplicate URL persists. Cloudflare can’t help because Hercules requires DNS-only.

Ask: a redirects config file, the way Netlify and Vercel handle it.

## 3. Custom HTTP headers

No way to send `Strict-Transport-Security`, so four Cloudflare security insights are permanently unresolvable. Same limitation blocks cache-control tuning.

## 4. Two platform-injected bugs worth fixing for everyone

**Unused preconnects.** PageSpeed flags `https://hercules.app` and `https://honorable-heron-893.convex.cloud` as never requested — both injected by the platform, both wasting connections on every page.

**`crossorigin` on non-CORS preconnects.** The CDN preconnect carries `crossorigin`, which opens a connection the browser never reuses. PageSpeed lists the same origin as a _preconnect candidate worth 300ms_ despite the tag already existing.

These are one-line template fixes that would help every Hercules site.

## 5. The font `@import` in the default scaffold

`src/index.css` line 1 is a CSS `@import` to Google Fonts. That’s serial: stylesheet → font CSS → font files, blocking render for ~1,200ms. A `<link>` in `index.html` parallelises it.

If that’s scaffold-generated, changing the default would be a free win across the platform.

## 6. Protected-file support

This is the one I’d push hardest as a workflow ask. Every prompt I’ve written for you carries a long “do not modify” section because a regeneration can silently break `analytics.ts`, a `data-cta` attribute, or the GTM snippet — and you lose lead tracking with no error.

Ask: a way to mark files or regions as protected, so the AI can’t touch them.

## 7. Background-image lazy loading

Card components use CSS `background-image`, which the browser can’t lazy-load. ~400 KiB of below-fold images download on first paint. Real `<img>` with `loading="lazy"` and an overlay would fix it in the component library.

* * *

If you only send three: **SSR, redirects, and protected files.** The first two unlock everything structural, and the third is what makes the platform safe to iterate on.

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**Author:** ![Anthony\_Saldana](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/96bed5/32.png) [@Anthony\_Saldana](https://forum.hercules.app/u/Anthony_Saldana)\
**Post date:** [October 20, 2026, 4:12pm UTC](https://forum.hercules.app/t/ssr-redirects-and-protected-files/960/2 "2026-10-20T16:12:04Z")

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Thank you for all the feedback. We have noted your several feature requests. SSR is something we are actively working on so we expect that to be ready soon. The other requests are noted and we will follow up if there is any update regarding anything.