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Jess Lee Subscriber for The DEV Team

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Announcing the DigitalOcean App Platform Hackathon on DEV!

We are thrilled to announce the DigitalOcean App Platform Hackathon on DEV! 🎉

From now through January 10th, you’ll have the opportunity to win some seriously sweet prizes for building an application using DigitalOcean’s new App Platform. In the process, you’ll get to know the DigitalOcean App Platform and walk away with a shiny new app to your name ✨

Categories

The DigitalOcean App Platform Hackathon on DEV is calling for projects in the following four categories:

  • Personal Site/Portfolio: Build a personal portfolio site as your submission. Don’t be afraid to get creative and show off your work and experience in a fresh way
  • Program for the People: Build an application related to mental health, a public service (like a COVID-19 spread tracker), or a feel-good app to ring in the New Year right
  • Built for Business: Build something that could become commercial and earn big bucks. This could be anything from a professional tool to something that’s a part of your very own business
  • Random Roulette: Build a wacky app that doesn’t fit into one of the categories above. With this category, we are looking for some truly silly and/or fun submissions. The possibilities are endless!

What is the App Platform from DigitalOcean?

DigitalOcean’s App Platform helps you build your applications quickly and with fewer distractions. With it, you can push code to production in just a few clicks while DigitalOcean handles the infrastructure, app runtimes, and dependencies.

Learn more about App Platform here, read the docs here, and find some tutorials here. Here's a video on how to build, deploy, and scale your first app on App Platform.

A few examples of applications built on the DigitalOcean App Platform:

We cannot wait to see how you approach this fun challenge — and the amazing applications you come up with!

Why Participate?

The DigitalOcean App Platform Hackathon on DEV is a fantastic (and free) opportunity to get better acquainted with a new Platform-as-a-Service tool so you can focus on what you do best — develop software! The four categories (listed above) will help you demonstrate your creativity and software acumen while learning and having some fun.

If that’s not incentive enough, we also have some prizes you won’t want to miss.

Prizes

4 Grand Prize Winners (one in each category):

  • $2,000 USD gift card or equivalent
  • $300 USD credit to the DEV Shop
  • DigitalOcean Swag Pack
  • DEV Sticker Pack
  • DEV “App Platform Hackathon” grand prize profile badge
  • A Zoom meet-and-greet with DigitalOcean’s CEO, Yancey Spruill

Runner-Up Prizes (10 Total):

  • $200 USD gift card or equivalent
  • $150 USD credit to the DEV Shop
  • DigitalOcean Swag Pack
  • DEV Sticker Pack
  • DEV “App Platform Hackathon” runner-up profile badge

Participants (with a valid project):

  • DEV Sticker Pack
  • DEV “App Platform Hackathon” participant profile badge

How to submit your app and enter the DigitalOcean App Platform Hackathon on DEV

  • Select a category for your project (listed above)
  • Create a new DigitalOcean account (or use your existing account! Note: a credit card will be required at sign-up, but you will not be charged. Please refer to these FAQs for more info.
  • Create an app using DigitalOcean’s App Platform that falls under one of the listed categories
  • Fill out this form to get a $50 credit for DigitalOcean, good for 60 days from the date of redemption.
  • Use one of the following permissive licenses for your code: MIT, Apache, BSD-2, BSD-3, or Commons Clause.
  • Use this post template to officially submit your application for the hackathon
  • Be sure to publish your submission on DEV between December 10 and January 10 (11:59 PM PT/8 AM January 11, UTC), and provide your app’s URL, screenshot, description, and source code

Bonus points for…

  • Documenting your app’s progress across multiple posts with the final post serving as your official submission (hint: use series: [“series name”] in the markdown heading of all your App Platform Hackathon posts to link all content in a series)
  • Using the Deploy to DO button in your app (info here )

** ”Bonus points” means we will give submissions with these criteria priority when selecting winners.

Additional Rules

NO PURCHASE NECESSARY. Open only to 18+. Contest entry period ends January 10, 2021, 11:59 pm PST/ 8 AM UTC on January 11, 2021. Contest is void where prohibited or restricted by law or regulation. All entries must be new projects and created during the hackathon period. For Official Rules, see Contest Announcement Page and General Contest Official Rules.

Community Support

To ask any questions about DigitalOcean's App Platform throughout the hackathon, leave a comment in the App Platform Hackathon help thread

If you run into any additional questions about DigitalOcean’s App Platform, you can also reach their team by asking a question here

We also have a community discussion thread where you can share your ideas and get suggestions on improvements from the DEV community as you build your app. We encourage you to share your progress along the way to generate more excitement and benefit from additional community feedback suggestions.

Important Dates 🗓

  • December 10, 2020: Hackathon Begins
  • January 10, 2021: Hackathon Submission Due at 11:59 PM PST
  • January 15, 2021: Hackathon Winners Announced

We can’t wait to see what you build. Happy coding!

Top comments (191)

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chris__sev profile image
Chris Sev

Hey everyone! My name is Chris and I'm the founder of scotch.io and a Developer Advocate at DigitalOcean.

Excited about this hackathon and the things we'll all build! Let me know if you have any questions here or catch me on Twitter.

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kubeden profile image
Kuberdenis

Hey Chris, huge fan of scotch.io, the JS introduction particularly! I've got a question for you - is a game project considered "truly silly" for the random roulette? Is it worth giving a shot, or should I go for something else in your opinion?

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kubeden profile image
Kuberdenis

I mean - I have an idea for a game, which is not silly (I can, of course, try to make it such with funny drawings and so on) and I am thinking if it's worth going for that or
should I choose something else?

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chris__sev profile image
Chris Sev

A game is a great idea! 100% go for it! Random roulette is very much for stuff like this that doesn't fit cleanly into the other categories.

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kubeden profile image
Kuberdenis

Thank man! And good luck to all participants, HACK ON!

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manitej profile image
Manitej ⚡ • Edited

I'm trying to use digital ocean from many months but I live in india. Students don't have a credit card nor a PayPal account. Missing this hackathon too :(

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cubiclesocial profile image
cubiclesocial

PayPal became available in India as of 2017, so I'm not sure why you can't use it with a bank account + PAN. DigitalOcean requires a prepayment of $5 USD to start the DO account via PayPal even with the $50 in credit for this hackathon.

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mridubhatnagar profile image
Mridu Bhatnagar

$5 goes through payment or is it deducted from $50 credit that they are giving?

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bobbyiliev profile image
Bobby Iliev

Hey,

The $5 will be used to top up your account, this mainly applies to PayPal. Here are the two messages for each payment method again:

Credit card:
“We won’t charge your card. You may see a temporary pre-authorization charge to verify the card, which will be reversed within a week.”

Paypal:
“To confirm your PayPal account, you need to make a $5 pre-payment. This pre-payment will apply to any future bills.”

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mridubhatnagar profile image
Mridu Bhatnagar

You mean if I use PayPal I am going to be charged $5?

Is there any other alternative if I don't wish to pay?

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bobbyiliev profile image
Bobby Iliev

Currently, you could choose only between PayPal and Credit card payments.

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guryashzone profile image
Guryash Singh

Same here, but I will try risking $5 for learning something new!

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kristijankanalas profile image
Kristijan Kanalaš

Hey Chris, I would like to ask if it's possible to enter multiple times with separate projects?

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chris__sev profile image
Chris Sev

Definitely! Highly encouraged to do so. I will be!

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anupa profile image
Anup Aglawe

I have a doubt regarding how routes are setup for a static sites and it's corresponding web service.
My specific use case is to implement GitHub oauth on my react/express/GraphQL application.

Locally everything works fine, I have a button which redirects my react app to localhost:4000/auth/GitHub , which gets redirected to GitHub oauth page and then successful login redirects back localhost:3000 (react app).

But on my app platform, I can see only a single APP_URL. I'm confused which goes where and GitHub oauth requires app url & callback url ( localhost:3000 & localhost:4000/user/signin/callback ) this works well in my local env. But not sure what should I put when in production.

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ayanb profile image
Ayan Banerjee

It appears you need two separate apps for the frontend and backend. In that scenario, simply create 2 apps in the app platform.

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anupa profile image
Anup Aglawe

But the straight forward way seems to be just adding a static site component and web service component, and most probably they were meant to be used in that manner. (and not creating separate apps for client and server ).

Also, if I add a http route let's say /api on my web service component. I can access GraphQL endpoints by ${APP_URL}/api/graphql

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ayanb profile image
Ayan Banerjee

Yes, thanks. That seems to be a much cleaner way!

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cwraytech profile image
Christopher Wray

Hey Chris! Does moving existing sites over to the app platform count towards the hackathon, or no?

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bobbyiliev profile image
Bobby Iliev

Hi there 👋

I believe that it should be ok as long as you deploy the site on the App platform and the project is opensource. Also make sure to add the Deploy to DigitalOcean button for some extra points.

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krishnakakade profile image
krishna kakade

i need a help with this

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krishnakakade profile image
krishna kakade

if i added my credit card to DigitalOcean how many applications i can host with help of 50$ credit

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bobbyiliev profile image
Bobby Iliev

According to the official documentation, the App Platform has three pricing tiers:

  • Starter: Free. Good for trying App Platform and deploying static sites. You can build and deploy 3 static sites for free on the Starter tier. Every additional static site costs $3/mo.
  • Basic: Starts at $5/month (for one container). Good for prototyping apps.
  • Professional: Starts at $12/month (for one container). Good for deploying production apps.

For more information you can take a look at the documentation here:

digitalocean.com/docs/app-platform/

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anupa profile image
Anup Aglawe • Edited

Hey I'm developing an application as a part of this hackathon.
I see a strict credit card requirement while signing on digital ocean. Is there any workaround for this, at least for students?

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graciegregory profile image
Gracie Gregory (she/her)

I can't wait to see what everyone builds for this hackathon — especially for the Random Roulette category 🎉

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bobbyiliev profile image
Bobby Iliev

Good luck everyone 🙌

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chris__sev profile image
Chris Sev

What are you gonna build Bobby?

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bobbyiliev profile image
Bobby Iliev

I'm planning to build a website for the opensource Introduction to Bash scripting eBook!

I'm planning to use TailwindCSS 🤘 and also the site will include an interactive training section based on Katacoda. 😁

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bobbyiliev profile image
Bobby Iliev

What about you Chris?

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chris__sev profile image
Chris Sev

Personal site/portfolio. Next + Tailwind + Strapi or Statamic.

And streaming it all!

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bobbyiliev profile image
Bobby Iliev

That’s awesome! I’ll definitely make sure to join those streams 👏

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ben profile image
Ben Halpern

Let's do this

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chris__sev profile image
Chris Sev

Right on! I'm planning on building my personal site (finally!)

  • Strapi or Statamic backend
  • Next.js frontend
  • Tailwind for styling
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rasharm_ profile image
Raman Sharma

This is exciting.

Here is a post I wrote recently that describes some of the cool things you can do with App Platform:

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aritdeveloper profile image
Arit Developer

This is going to be EPIC! 🤩. 🥳

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mattipv4 profile image
Matt Cowley

:party-parrot:

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chris__sev profile image
Chris Sev

:party-shark:

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kubeden profile image
Kuberdenis

And I thought the Slack spirit won't haunt me when I change the company (using Teams now)...

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mendoza profile image
David Mendoza (He/Him)

Hey guys I'm a full stack developer in MERN stack if someone needs help, let me know I might like the proyect and help you to develop it

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spiritupbro profile image
spiritupbro

OMG finally let me join this hackathon and win this one hopefully let's go everybody!!!

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bobbyiliev profile image
Bobby Iliev

Good luck to you too! 🙌

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spiritupbro profile image
spiritupbro

lets go my man!!

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torstendittmann profile image
Torsten Dittmann

Just published my blog post about building a website status monitor using DigitalOcean's App Platform for the #hackathon!

Good luck everyone 🥳

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