A digital home for an active martial arts community
Extreme martial arts and tricking are visual sports. Athletes share routines and videos, learn techniques from one another and take part in competitions. Adrenaline Worldwide brought those activities together online, with a community of athletes, performers, instructors and fans supported by membership offerings.
A site for that audience needed to do more than display information about the sport. It had to present athletes and their videos, provide a place for events and competitions, and eventually support ways for instructors and students to learn and work together. As the community evolved, its website became an increasingly important part of how the organization operated.
SLIDEFACTORY wireframed, designed and developed the original WordPress site, then continued as its development partner. Over the following years, our work expanded from content and competition features into studio memberships, student certification, payments, advertising and live event streaming, with support continuing through March 2023.
Wireframes, design and development
The site’s first design organized the material around athletes, videos, events, rankings and a shop. We wireframed those sections and developed a visual identity using a dark palette, condensed headlines, action photography and red and blue accents suited to a video-heavy sports community.
In WordPress, we structured athletes, events and videos as custom content types with editable fields. That gave Adrenaline’s team a way to publish new profiles and material as the community expanded.
Competitions, tutorials and voting
Early development broadened the ways members could participate. We built competition listings and detail pages, an athlete grid and a tutorial library organized into categories and subcategories. As the collection grew, we added category filtering and search so members could find relevant lessons and competition content.
For competitions, we implemented member voting with live counts and rules that limited when votes could be submitted. Member classes followed in 2020, with membership checks determining access and tabbed pages for the course material.
A studio program for instructors and students
In early 2021, the client expanded the platform’s role from community and competition into instruction. Studios needed their own accounts, and instructors needed a way to invite students, review progress and issue certificates without managing every step manually.
We designed and implemented a studio system using WordPress custom post types, Advanced Custom Fields and WooCommerce Memberships. Studio profiles supported contracts and pending, active or canceled status. An instructor could add students and send enrollment links tied to the studio; the registration flow checked existing accounts and memberships to avoid duplicate users and charges. Instructors could manage a live student list without page reloads.
On the learning side, we built courses, quizzes, video submissions, completion emails and downloadable certificates. Someone who was both a student and an instructor could switch between those roles. Before release, we tested registration and cancellation paths and recorded walkthroughs for both groups. Later refinements included email verification, resend and removal tools for administrators, and points and XP for members.
Freemium, advertising and live events
As the membership program grew, Adrenaline also changed how people could access the site. In 2021 and 2022, we researched advertising options, configured Google AdSense and added placements to athlete, event, video and search views while adjusting restrictions on trial membership. The freemium offering launched in March 2022.
For an August 2022 live event, we implemented a page with a countdown, sponsors and access controls based on membership. We tested it for different account types, monitored the stream during the event and later retired the temporary pages with redirects.
Keeping the community platform running
As competitions, courses and memberships added complexity, the underlying site also needed regular maintenance. We migrated hosting to Google Cloud, added CDN delivery and media compression, configured SendGrid and Mailchimp, maintained plugins and PHP and resolved billing issues involving WooCommerce and Stripe renewals or membership upgrades.
In late 2021, we also worked through discovery for a possible companion app, preparing its structure, a UX map, branding exploration and a development estimate. The records cover that planning work, not construction of a mobile app.
A community site that grew with its members
Adrenaline Worldwide began as a place for athletes to share videos, follow events and find one another. Over the years, the website grew to support competitions, lessons, instructor-managed studios, student certification and a freemium offering. The March 2022 freemium launch and August live event were milestones in that evolution, while the underlying membership and payment systems needed continued care.
Our involvement started with the original wireframes, design and WordPress build and continued through March 2023. More than 930 hours are recorded from July 2019 onward, following the initial work. The result was a community platform that could accommodate new ways to participate, teach and organize events while retaining the familiar home for athletes and fans that the project began with.
