Hackathon Management Platform using PHP and MySQL

• Admin dashboard with KPIs and recent activity log
• Event management with full CRUD operations
• Registration management with filters, status updates, payment notes, and CSV export
• Team management with approval, rejection, leader change, problem assignment, and delete options
• Problem statement management with CRUD and CSV bulk import
• Lab and room management with team-lab assignments
• Attendance management with manual entry, code lookup, filters, delete, and CSV export
• Submission management with status workflow, full edit, filters, and delete
• Evaluation round and scoring criteria management
• Evaluator assignment and round lock/unlock controls
• Leaderboard generation with filters and CSV export
• Staff management for admin, evaluator, coordinator accounts
• Issue and support ticket management with remarks and triage
• Feedback management and cleanup tools
• Certificate template management and certificate issuance
• Announcement management for website updates
• Gallery image upload and management
• System settings and feature flags management
• Reports module with tabbed summaries and CSV exports

• User signup, login, logout, and forgot password
• Public landing page, about page, events page, and event details page
• Participant dashboard with activity and overview
• Event registration and registration status tracking
• Team creation, joining, and management
• Problem statement browsing and selection
• Project submission with title, abstract, file upload, repository link, and demo link
• Draft and final submission workflow
• Attendance and check-in support
• Certificate viewing for eligible participants
• Feedback and rating submission
• Support issue or ticket raising
• Profile update and profile completion tracking
• Evaluator workspace for team-wise and criteria-wise scoring
• Coordinator access for evaluation and management workflows

• Role-based access control for admin, participant, evaluator, and coordinator
• Secure password hashing using password_hash() and password_verify()
• Session-based authentication in PHP
• PDO-based MySQL connectivity with exception error mode
• Activity log for important actions and audit trail
• Feature toggle support through system settings
• Idempotent evaluator score saving using INSERT ... ON DUPLICATE KEY UPDATE
• SQL-based leaderboard calculation using aggregated marks
• File upload support for submissions and gallery
• UTF-8 compatible MySQL/MariaDB database design
• Plain PHP project without Composer dependencies
• Bootstrap 5 responsive UI with Bootstrap Icons
• CSV import and export support in multiple modules
• Suitable for colleges, universities, coding events, and startup hackathons

1. Copy or clone the project into your local server directory or any PHP-supported web root.
2. Create a MySQL database named hackathon_platform.
3. Import the database files:
   • database/schema.sql
   • database/seed.sql
4. Open config/database.php and update:
   • DB_HOST
   • DB_NAME
   • DB_USER
   • DB_PASS
   • BASE_PATH
5. Make sure PHP 8.0+ and MySQL/MariaDB are installed.
6. Enable required PHP extensions:
   • pdo_mysql
   • session
   • json
   • fileinfo recommended
7. Ensure the uploads/ folder has write permission.
8. Run the project using Apache, XAMPP, WAMP, Nginx, or PHP built-in server:

php -S localhost:8080

9. Open the browser and visit:

http://localhost:8080

Demo login credentials for local testing:

• Admin
  Email: [email protected]
  Password: password
• Evaluator
  Email: [email protected]
  Password: password
• Coordinator
  Email: [email protected]
  Password: password
• Participant
  Email: [email protected]
  Password: password