How to use normal pathnames instead of # in Polymer client urls

I want my polymer website page URLs to be shareable on Facebook. I am dynamically updating the following meta tags per page visited using javascript on the client.

og.title
og.description
og.image
og.url

I have setup Apache .htaccess to redirect Facebook crawler to use prerender.io service so that the page can be fully loaded and javascript executed before being service to the Facbook crawler.
I am having a challenge to make this setup work and I’m suspecting the problem is with the use of # in paths because prerender service is only caching the root website folder instead of the requested inner paths. I want to try using normal paths. How do I do this. I have tried just removing the use-hash-as-path in element but that is messing my website routing. Your help is greatly appreciated.

Hi,
Find <app-location> elements and remove use-hash-as-path attribute. Also you might need to change links and programmatic location changes if your app is deployed under some context (e.g. //) to contain context path.

I have done that…i.e. removing the use-has-as-path from and also including a baseUrl in the pattern attribute of and in programmatic location changes. I set the basUrl attribute as a global variable using element. This works well as long as I open the links inside the index page. if I click the browser reload, the links don’t work. When I paste the full path in a new tab, the link doe not work also.

Most articles I’m reading on the web on this topic say that use of pathnames requires “cooperation of the backend server”. What exactly does this mean in the context of CUBA?