I've started using [1] state.js for state management with backbone. It has the wonderful ability to extend any owner object with a state machine, so you can turn models, views or whatever into fully functional FSMs.

I'm actually dying to get around to a project that requires server-side rendering again, because I think having this logic abstracted will make this stuff so much more straight-forward.

I'm already able to replay the entire navigational flow of the site entirely on the server, as part of the tests.

[1] http://statejs.org