From Solo to Social: Building a Vibrant Online Riding Community for Roll

Overview

Our client envisioned a dynamic digital platform to connect bicycle riders — making it easy to discover, plan, and coordinate group rides, and share their experiences along the way. We collaborated closely to design and develop a web application that brings this vision to life. The result is a sleek, user-friendly interface powered by a robust and scalable backend, ensuring seamless ride coordination and community engagement.

The Challenge

Our client identified a significant gap in the cycling community – riders lacked a dedicated platform to:

Discover Group Rides: No centralized way to find riding groups or events in their area

Coordinate Activities: Difficulty organizing group rides and managing participant communication

Share Experiences: Limited platforms specifically designed for riders to document and share their journeys

Build Community: Fragmented online presence across multiple generic social platforms

The client needed a solution that would unite these scattered communities into one cohesive, purpose-built platform while ensuring seamless mobile accessibility for riders on-the-go.

Our Solution

We developed a comprehensive web application tailored for cyclists, emphasizing seamless usability and real-time connectivity.

Responsive Interface: Designed to adapt fluidly across devices, ensuring a consistent and intuitive experience whether on a smartphone, tablet, or desktop.

Real-Time Ride and Event Mapping: Leveraged Google Maps integration to display accurate locations of nearby rides and events, allowing users to discover and join activities effortlessly.

Ride/Event Commitments: Users can RSVP to rides and events, signaling their participation and fostering better coordination among group members.

Advanced Filtering Options: Implemented filters to help users find rides and events that match their preferences, such as distance, difficulty level, or time.

Comprehensive Search Functionality: Users can search for specific people, rides, or events, making it easier to connect with fellow cyclists and plan group activities.

Discover Rides & Events from External Platforms: Users can now explore and participate in cycling events listed on platforms like RunSignUp and BikeReg, expanding their access to a broader range of cycling activities.

Embeddable Widgets: We developed customizable widgets that users can easily embed into their personal websites or blogs. These widgets display upcoming rides, events, or user-specific cycling activities, allowing for seamless integration and promotion of events within their own digital platforms.

Profile Section: Each user has a dedicated profile showcasing their cycling activities, upcoming events etc.,

Followers/Following/Favorited Users: Users can follow fellow cyclists, view their rides/events, and favorite profiles to stay updated on their rides and events.

Google Ads Integration: The platform incorporates Google Ads in-feed and banner placements, providing relevant advertisements without disrupting the user experience.

Instant Alerts: Users receive real-time notifications on the website, email and SMS about new followers, event updates, and ride invitations, ensuring they stay informed and engaged.

Weekly Summary Reports: Personalized weekly emails summarize upcoming rides and events that users or their followed profiles are attending, aiding in planning and participation.

Admin Panel based on Retool: We implemented a centralized admin panel using Retool, providing administrators with an intuitive interface to efficiently manage rides, events, users, and tags. This solution streamlines content moderation and operational oversight, ensuring smooth platform management.

This holistic approach ensures that cyclists have a reliable and engaging platform to connect, plan, and share their riding experiences.

Technical Architecture

To bring the vision behind roll.ooo to life, we designed a scalable, cloud-native architecture that ensures a seamless experience for cyclists while enabling robust content and user management capabilities for platform administrators.

Frontend & User Experience

At the core of the platform is a mobile-first, responsive web application built using NextJS optimized for cyclists on the move. This is a Cloud Run service built on GCP.

• Google Maps and Firebase for location-based ride/event discovery and real-time updates.
• Google Analytics and Google Ads for user insights and monetization.
• Google reCAPTCHA to secure user inputs and prevent spam.
• Firebase and Pub/Sub for real-time notifications (e.g., RSVP updates, new ride invites).
• Cloud Storage & Artifact Registry to manage images and frontend assets securely and reliably.

Backend & Core Services

The backend is deployed in Google Cloud Run within a private subnet, ensuring scalability and security. It powers:

• Ride & event scheduling
• User profiles, favorites, and social connections
• Integration with external APIs like RunSignUp and BikeReg
• Realtime notification triggers and email/SMS scheduling

Supporting services include:

• Cloud SQL for structured data storage
• Secret Manager for credential handling
• Cloud Scheduler and Cloud Tasks for background job orchestration

Notification Engine

We implemented a robust notification system using:

• Pub/Sub to trigger and queue notification events
• Cloud Tasks to schedule weekly ride/event digests
• SendGrid and Twilio for email and SMS delivery, ensuring users never miss key updates from their network

This architecture supports both real-time alerts (e.g., someone RSVPing to a ride you’re attending) and scheduled summaries (e.g., weekly emails of rides your favorite riders are joining).

Admin Operations

Platform administrators manage rides, events, users, and content through a Retool-based Admin Panel, offering:

• Secure, centralized control
• Real-time data access
• Easy moderation and content curation

Business Impact

• End-to-End Delivery: Successfully designed, built, and launched a comprehensive web platform aligned with all client requirements.
• Mobile-First Focus: Delivered a fully responsive interface optimized for seamless use on smartphones and tablets.
• Scalable Infrastructure: Built on a robust, future-ready backend architecture designed to support community expansion.
• User-Driven Experience: Crafted an intuitive UI tailored specifically for cyclists—making discovery, planning, and participation effortless.
• Community Engagement: Empowered users to coordinate group rides, connect with peers, and share their cycling journeys.
• Modern Tech Stack: Utilized the latest web technologies to ensure fast, reliable, and app-like performance in the browser.
• Client Success: Delivered all milestones on time while surpassing expectations in terms of functionality and platform quality.