Abstract: A method and system for an active cell rendering engine, including a web server, a rendering engine, an application layer, and a data layer. The application layer includes cell applications. The data layer has data sources corresponding to the cell applications. One of the cell application is started pursuant to a request from the rendering engine, and returns formatted data, based on the data source in the data layer, to the rendering engine. The rendering engine, responsive to a copy request, provides a copy of one of the cell applications to the another page. The copied cell application includes a reference back to the page, so that modifications to the page appear in the copied cell application in a real-time fashion. Users can thus copy cells to pages, and construct pages utilizing copied cells, in order to keep real-time updated content in a cell on a page. The application layer and data layer can be provided in a configuration separate from the web server and rendering engine.