Roadkill, the YouTube hit from the publisher of MotorTrend and HOT ROD, follows David Freiburger and Mike Finnegan on unlikely road trips in old project cars. Fans wanted somewhere to gather.
Roadkill launched in 2012 on the Motor Trend YouTube channel. By 2015, The Enthusiast Network (TEN) called it the most viewed YouTube automotive original series in the world, reaching an average of more than 3 million viewers per episode.
The Brief: The First Official Roadkill Site
In August 2015, TEN announced that Roadkill would become a multiplatform media brand, with a new Roadkill website going live alongside the first issue of Roadkill magazine and the Roadkill Nights event. The brand's first official site had to do a lot: showcase every episode, give spinoff shows their own presence and host a lively fan network.
What We Built: Show Hubs, Kaltura Video and RK Nation
- A custom WordPress and BuddyPress theme.
- Branded hubs for the spinoffs (24 Hours of Lemons, plus Dirt Every Day), where editors attach galleries, videos and related stories.
- RK Nation: a fan network with profiles, avatars, cover images, groups, friends, personal media and a members directory.
- Kaltura video with branding and view analytics, plus a landing page for every show.
- A Media Wall that collects every #BecauseRoadkill post from Instagram and Twitter.
Inside RK Nation
Roadkill Nation was built in BuddyPress with a highly customized design, so the community matches the look of the rest of the site. Members create a profile, join groups, add friends and keep up with a member activity feed. Profiles let fans upload an avatar, cover photo and bio and share their site activity, groups and galleries of their own media, and the members directory helps fans find each other.
Show hubs, video and the Media Wall
Custom post types power the branded landing pages for 24 Hours of Lemons and Dirt Every Day, so the Roadkill team can attach photo and video galleries and related articles to each brand page. Kaltura lets the team brand its videos and track view analytics, and the primary video landing page pulls in the latest videos, with click through to older episodes and sharing to social media. The Media Wall pulls every Twitter and Instagram post tagged #BecauseRoadkill onto the site.
Why It Mattered: A Community Beyond YouTube
Roadkill turned its audience into a community that lives on its own site, not just on YouTube.
Technology Stack
- WordPress
- BuddyPress
- Kaltura
- Social API integrations
Project leadership by Brian Messenlehner, AlphaWeb founder.
Related: BuddyPress community sites and apps, BuddyPress development, WordPress for media and publishers, Discovery Communications case study.
