JHMC has been an in person competition hosting over 450 middle schoolers from around the state of Illinois for 31 years. After COVID hit, we had to move the competition to a virtual format. There was really no existing available way to have hundreds of middle school students take a math competition at the same time, especially not in the format we wanted. Most other math competitions that hadn't previously been virtual had cancelled the contest due to virtual competition difficulties, and professional competition software had expensive fees or poor interfaces.
We didn't want to cancel JHMC 2021. So, we decided to make a test-taking site for JHMC. At first, it was just a small form allowing students to input answers, with the problems displayed above it. It evolved to much more. Each student had their own schedule page, which, for each round of the competition, gave them a Zoom link and the link for the test. It also included websocket alerts — so we could instantly notify every contest participant about a change of schedule or any other information. The website was a central figure for the contest. While the website isn't served anymore due to costs, you can always run it with node index.js.