Overview
A mature application with a valuable structured dataset.
TabRPG provides searchable game resources and tools for tabletop role-playing games. Its Bestiary turns a structured creature dataset into browsable, searchable, indexable content.
Problem
Make a deep dataset useful to people and discoverable on the web.
Users needed fast ways to search, filter, sort, and move through a large resource collection on different devices. Search engines needed stable detail routes, meaningful metadata, canonical URLs, and a complete sitemap.
Role
Product owner and hands-on implementer.
I designed and implemented the modernization work, balancing improvements to the user experience, search behavior, site structure, rendering architecture, testing, and SEO.
Approach
Incremental modernization over unnecessary replacement.
The current Bestiary is server rendered with ASP.NET Core. It combines search, filters, sorting, pagination, responsive interfaces, and individual detail routes with page metadata, canonical URLs, and a dynamic sitemap. This approach improves accessibility and discoverability while preserving the value of the existing application and dataset.
Technology
Outcome
A more useful and indexable resource experience.
The modernized application provides structured navigation through the dataset, focused detail routes, mobile-friendly presentation, and the technical signals search engines need to understand and discover the content.
What I learned
Modernization is a sequence of high-value decisions.
A wholesale rewrite is rarely the only path forward. Preserving working capabilities while improving rendering, structure, usability, testing, and discoverability can deliver value sooner with less risk.