Last week, I joined Chattingo Mini-Hackathon, and my goal was pretty ambitious:
build a complete CI/CD pipeline from scratch.
The idea was simple on paper but tough in practice — I wanted an automated workflow that could build, test, and deploy apps straight to production using Docker, Jenkins, and Nginx on a VPS.
Here’s how the three days went 👇
🛠️ Day 1: Setting the Foundation (Docker + VPS)
Day 1 was all about getting the basics in place.
- I started by containerizing the app with Docker so it would run the same everywhere.
- Then I spun up a VPS, set up SSH, and tightened it up with some firewall rules.
- Finally, I installed all the necessary tools and dependencies.
By the end of the day, I had a stable environment ready for automation. It felt like laying down bricks before building the house.
⚙️ Day 2: Building the Jenkins Pipeline
This was the most exciting day for me.
- I built a Jenkins pipeline with proper build, test, and deploy steps.
- Whenever I pushed code, Jenkins automatically built the Docker image, ran tests, and pushed everything live to production.
📸 Here’s the pipeline I ended up with:
Seeing my commits travel from Git → Docker → Production felt really satisfying.
✅ Day 3: Testing in Production + Writing Docs
The last day was about making sure things actually worked in the real world.
- I rolled everything out in production and tested it end-to-end.
- A couple of small issues popped up, but I fixed them quickly.
- I wrapped it all up with documentation so anyone could repeat the setup.
And of course, I had to make a demo video to showcase the whole thing 🎥
📚 What I Learned
In just three days, I walked away with hands-on experience in:
- Docker → packaging apps for consistency.
- Jenkins → building automated pipelines.
- VPS deployments → real-world app hosting and security.
- Documentation → because good projects should be repeatable.
By the end of the hackathon, I scored 34/40, which showed that the pipeline I built was robust and met most of the challenge requirements.
🏁 Wrapping Up
This hackathon really showed me the power of combining automation, containerization, and CI/CD.
In just a weekend, I went from idea to a fully automated deployment pipeline.
What’s next?
I’d love to take this further by adding:
- Kubernetes orchestration
- Monitoring with Prometheus/Grafana
- Auto-scaling for real-world traffic
👉 Honestly, this was one of the most fun and practical projects I’ve done so far. Learning Jenkins from scratch in just one day pushed me out of my comfort zone.
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