[Side Project] fortnite-sprites.com — a 102-page static site + programmatic SEO experiment for a niche gaming keyword

Hey r/SideProject,

Shipped this over the last few weekends: **https://fortnite-sprites.com\*\* — a collection

tracker + info site for the Fortnite "Runners season" Sprite system.

## What it does (for the non-Fortnite people)

Fortnite recently added 87 collectible mini-companion things called Sprites, each

with different effects. Players want to (a) track which ones they own, (b) share

progress with friends, (c) look up what each one does. That's the whole product.

Live features:

- **Collection tracker** — click cards to mark owned, saves to localStorage, no

account

- **Copy for Discord** — one click generates a formatted markdown breakdown with

rarity emojis

- **Share link** — URL-encodes 61 sprites as an 11-char base64url bitmap so you can

DM a link

- **Export image** — Canvas-generated 1080×1920 collection card (grouped by base

character)

- **Catalog** — 87 detail pages with location, summon cost, effect

- 5 hub pages (about, location map, tier list, tracker, catalog) + 10 programmatic

category pages (by rarity, by theme)

## The build

- **Vanilla JS + HTML + CSS. Zero npm deps at runtime, zero build framework.**

- One 400-line Node.js script (build.js) reads sprites-data.js and emits 102 static

HTML files

plus sitemap.xml

- Hosted on Cloudflare Pages (free tier)

- ~450KB total site weight, LCP ~0.5s

- All content pre-rendered server-side → every crawler including GPTBot /

PerplexityBot /

Bingbot gets fully-formed HTML

## The programmatic SEO experiment (this is the interesting bit)

I noticed keywords like "fortnite rare sprites" / "fortnite gold sprites" /

"fortnite mythic sprites"

have real search volume but no dedicated pages exist for them (Fandom wiki has

category pages but

they're heavy and slow). So I built 10 targeted pages:

- 5 rarity pages: `/rare-sprites/`, `/epic-sprites/`, `/legendary-sprites/`,

`/mythic-sprites/`, `/special-sprites/`

- 5 theme pages: `/gold-sprites/`, `/gummy-sprites/`, `/galaxy-sprites/`,

`/gem-sprites/`, `/holofoil-sprites/`

Each has:

- Unique hand-written intro (~150 words per page, not templated)

- Sprite card grid for that category

- 4-item hand-written FAQ (specific to that rarity/theme)

- Full JSON-LD (CollectionPage + ItemList + BreadcrumbList + FAQPage schema)

- Internal linking to tracker + tier list + related category pages

The bet: 10 pages × sub-100 monthly searches each = long-tail moat that a bigger

competitor

site can't be bothered to build.

## Things I'm second-guessing

1. **Is the programmatic SEO too transparent?** I hand-wrote intros for each page

but the

structural template (Hero → grid → About → FAQ → Related) is identical across all

Google's spam guidelines specifically call out "duplicate template with slight

variations"

as a red flag. Does my hand-written intro-per-page save me, or is the structural

sameness

still a risk?

2. **Zero JS framework** — every request I've been going back and forth on this.

Vanilla JS

is dead-simple to reason about and gives me perfect crawlability, but the moment

I want

client-side routing or a more complex tracker UI I'll regret it. Anyone shipped a

similar

niche tool and later regretted going vanilla?

3. **When does programmatic SEO actually start working?** The site is 0-day-old,

canonical

is set, sitemap submitted to GSC. I have no baseline for "how long until Google

indexes

102 URLs and starts ranking the long-tail terms". Realistic timeline

expectations?

4. **Feature bloat** — the tracker page now has: 3 filter controls

(status/rarity/base) + 4

action buttons (Discord copy / Export image / Share link / Reset) + View mode

when opened

via ?c= param. I keep adding features because they're fun to build. Should I be

culling

instead? What's the right amount for a "look at my collection" tool?

5. **No monetization plan** — I built this because I wanted the tool. Should I even

monetize

it if it takes off, or is a niche gaming tool site something you keep as a hobby

before

the season ends and it dies naturally?

## What I'd love from you

- **Roast the SEO approach** — anyone who's done programmatic SEO and can tell me

it's

going to fail early, before I invest more content-writing time

- **UX feedback** on the tracker page — try marking a few sprites, exporting an

image,

copying for Discord. Is anything confusing?

- **Bug reports** — I know there are edge cases in the base filter, and the "Water

Sprite

is currently bugged" note on the tier list page is community info that could be

stale

- **Feature-bloat opinions** — should I keep adding (route planner, sprite dust

calculator,

trading) or stop?

Not monetized. Not open source (yet — might do after I sort the SEO play). Live at

**fortnite-sprites.com**.

Happy to answer any technical questions about the build. The programmatic SEO data

file,

the URL-encoded share bitmap, or the Canvas export flow — pick your favorite and

I'll dig in.