Discussion: Why is the 404 page rendered by the server?

Right now the 404 not found page is generated as string of HTML and CSS and is returned directly by the server, no React involved.

The most obvious downside of this approach is that the text on this page will never get translated to the user's current language, which is a barrier to accessibility.

I'm researching this a bit and realizing that we do need to serve something different from the server in order to get the correct HTTP status code on the page (404 rather than 200). But it seems like the server should return more of a skeleton and let React inject the content. In fact, I think it could still return the same index page? react-router can be set up to display the "page not found" content when there is no matched route.

Start by reading server/views/404Page.js and server/views/index.js to understand the current server-rendered responses. Then inspect the React routing entry point and how react-router handles unmatched routes. Done means the server still returns HTTP 404 while the not-found content is rendered by React and can use the user's language.