The May Dev Derby is underway. A monthly contest hosted by the Mozilla Developer Network, the Dev Derby gives you the chance to apply the technology you read about on this blog, push the web forward, and compete for fame, glory, and prizes.

This month, we are excited to see what you can do with Websockets. Websockets allow you to send messages to a server and receive event-driven responses in real time, without server polling. But this is about more than just sending messages. Websockets have been used in BrowserQuest, Rawkets, and many other highly interactive applications.

Setting up a Websockets demo is more involved than setting up a static demo, but we know you can do it. As long as you keep these three simple rules in mind, everything should work flawlessly.

1. To use Websockets, you need a server to communicate with. Thankfully, free services like Heroku and Nodejitsu provide just that.
2. You do not need to use Heroku or Nodejitsu. If you use a different server, however, you must ensure that it has a signed SSL certificate.
3. When building your demo, be sure to use the wss:// prefix (not the ws:// prefix) to specify the address of your server.

If you have any questions about setup, please let us know in the comments. We will work with you to resolve any issues you encounter. Otherwise, good luck and have fun!

Want to get a head start on a future Derby? We are also accepting entries related to the WebGL (June Derby) and demos that push the limits of the web without using JavaScript (July Derby).