I found it to be much easier to build an API (in rails or whatever, I use phoenix/elixir now) and consume it with either a frontend framework like ember (I use

I found it to be much easier to build an API (in rails or whatever, I use phoenix/elixir now) and consume it with either a frontend framework like ember (I use elm now) or a static site generator (I use hugo). This way I can produce either an app frontend (something that requires JS) or a site frontend (something that doesn't require JS).