[devhead]

kids don't have credit cards; the organization should have been providing free paid hosting with git support and ability to deploy through github actions...it should have been: git and github is a requirement for hosting your code. imho

[gabereiser]

You're absolutely right. They should have provided VM's for each team using a secure linux os and instructions on how to connect and what their url is/would be along with a git repo to pull those instructions using the students ssh keys. If the students want to use actions to auto-deploy, that's fine, just make sure the key isn't in the repo and is supplied via params. This would have made any restrictions about "template engine" irrelevant and simplified the contest as well as provide a safe haven for the kids to "compute" in.