The discord-hackathon-template's intro from varghesejose2020

Discord Hackathon Server Template

Supercharge your hackathon experience

🧐 About

Ever wanted to supercharge your online hackathon with Discord, but didn't know where to start? Fear not! This template, and the documentation below, gets you set up and running with your very own Hackathon Discord server in minutes. With a one-click server template packed full of pre-configured channels and roles, and all the documentation and resources to get your event going, this is your one-stop-shop for running a successful hackathon - or any other virtual event - on Discord.

🏁 Getting Started

To get started with all these fantastic resources, you'll need the GitHub Student Developer Pack, a Discord account, and a little background knowledge of Discord! If you already have all of these, you can speed through to using the Hackathon Template below, and begin fleshing out your server with Bots, graphics, and event ideas.

Prerequisites

🎒 Get the GitHub Student Developer Pack
Create a Discord account
📖 Check out the Beginner's Guide to Discord

Setting up your server

Now that you're all set up with the Student Developer Pack, have a Discord account, and know the basics of using Discord, you're ready to create your very own Hackathon server! We've provided a Discord Server template, at the link below, for you to get started with. This template comes pre-loaded with all the channels, roles, and permissions you need for a Hackathon server.

⚠️ You can only use this template to set up a brand new server, so if you've already got a server going, you can either delete it and start a new one, or open up the template on a spare server and use it for inspiration and improvement!

🔗 Hackathon Server Template

Enable community features

To take the best of the Discord features, you'll need enabled the community features. To enable your community server, you can read the instructions in the Discord App Docs. This features will unlock the following community tools:

Announcements channel
Welcome screen
Server insights

Personalize your server

Add an image icon to your server
Create a welcome message for new users to read
Use emojis in your server channels

Assign roles to users

Invite the hackathon staff, speakers, mentors and sponsors to your server and assign them the role that suits them better. You can read more about the server roles in the Template Structure section.

Add sponsors

In order to provide visibility to your sponsors, you can create a category for each of them. We added an example on how this will look like in the Sponsor category of the template. By default, there is no voice channel but we suggest that sponsors have the ability to open a support voice channel within their sponsor category to help out attendees or interact with them.

To give sponosors permissions to open a voice channel in their sponsor category, you can either give the each individual member the manage channels permission in the category.

🤖 Bots

Use the following bots to create your own custom commands and functionality. These bots will help you automate your event making it more interactive, easy to manage and fun! We highly encourage you to customize these bots to your event needs.

Bot	Description
Zira.gg	Zira lets users add and remove roles for themselves by simply reacting to a message.
Ticket Tool	Ticket Tool is a highly versatile support bot for Discord. It allows private support channels, or Tickets, between your staff team and individual users to be created.

Tips & Tricks

Have multiple admins that can create and manage roles, channels, and permissions as needed and have a clear rotation of admins through the lenght of the event that can react to the event needs.
Tell judges not to answer DMs from attendees unless your team agrees to provide feedback to attendees.

Template Structure

The structure and roles of the template are consider minimal for any hackathon - but it's a good starting point for any type of virtual event. Let's take a look at the channels and roles:

Roles

Event Staff: Anyone involved in the event organization such as hosts, moderators, and volunteers. This role has moderator permissions, and can mute, kick, and ban users.
Mentor: An individual who is a part of the event, and provides advice to attendees.
Speaker: An individual who is a part of the event, and delivers content through talk or workshop.
Judge: An individual who is a part of the event, and evaluates the projects based on a criteria.
Attendee: Any individual who is a part of the event, and is either participating or lurking on the event server.

Categories and channel

Welcome
- A: 📢| announcements
- T: #👋| welcome
- T: #📝| rules
- T: #❓| faq-and-resources
- T: #🌱| getting-started
Mod
- T: #💬| staff-chat
- T: #🎖| judging
- T: #🛡| mod-log
- V:📣 Staff War Room
General
- T: #🔰| introductions
- T: #💬| general
- T: #❓| event-questions
- V:🏛 Main Stage
- V:☕️ Lounge
- V:🎙 Breakout Room
Sponsor-1
- T: #💬| sponsor-1
Activities
- T: #👾| off-topic
- T: #🎒| workshop
- V:🎙 workshop
Mentoring
- T: #👤| whois
- T: #✋| get-a-mentor
- T: #💬| mentor-room
- V:🎙 Mentor Room

Additional Resources

Claim your Virtual Event Kit benefits and organize virtual events like a pro without paying for tools or services.
Learn how to moderate a Discord server with Discord's moderation guides.
Join the Major League Hacking hackathon season.
Read the hackathon organizer guide.