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Comment by brador | Hacker News Reader

What methods are used for getting traffic to single page apps? I'm guessing search engines don't send much traffic.

My side project is a single page JS application. It uses hashbangs because I want to support legacy browsers, but a lot of fancy new apps will just use HTML5 push-state to control the URL.

What this means is that your browser loads a single page (e.g. index.html) which loads a big chunk of javascript. That JS then handles all the state changes, content refreshing, URL changing, etc. So instead of querying the server for new pages as you navigate, the JS asks the server for you.

The advantage is that you (can) have lightening fast user interface and minimal data transfer between browser and server.

As an example, this is my project: http://comparerc.com

And here is an example product page within my site: http://comparerc.com/#!/product/84869/pnp-micro-p-51/

The URL is unique and lands on a unique "product", but all the code is generated from a single PHP page and a single chunk of JS. Despite that, Google has most of my product pages in it's index, just like any normal website.

You should check this out: https://github.com/balupton/History.js

I'm using Sammy.js (http://www.sammyjs.org/) which supports auto-fallback to hashbangs if HTML5 push-state isn't supported...I just haven't bothered to turn it on. Frankly, the hashbang doesn't really bother me at all, my URLs have a bunch of random parameters anyway (because it's a search engine) and Google is incapable of indexing either push-state or hashbangs without extra help.

So all it really does is remove two characters from the URL at the expense of more complexity and fragility.

There's also the added benefit of being able to support users without JavaScript, which includes a large portion of iOS/Android users. http://stephanierieger.com/a-plea-for-progressive-enhancemen...

Just because an app is single-page doesn't mean there's only a single URL. A single-page app can appear to have as-deep a set of URLs as any other site using HTML5 Pushstate or an alternate solution ... something essential to allowing the bookmarking distinct page-states, or indexing of your site's content.

You put them behind a landing page/login barrier like any other app.

I think you are mistaken cowsaysoik. You can have your single page app load any content requested by the URL. Single page doesn't mean landing page, it is used to refer to sites that work like apps. The page is only loaded once,a nd then portions of the page are changed based on the users request.

I'm not confused I use newsblur like an app but it is behind a landing page when not logged in (https://newsblur.com/). There are plenty of other examples, otherwise it would be quite hard to get new users to your service as they can't find what your app is about.

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