ahakala / bracket-madness

Bracket Madness

The goal of this project is to provide a platform for running a self hosted March Madness bracket game. It is based on a Sourceforge project which is still available at http://sourceforge.net/projects/tourney.

Requirements

• PHP 4.1 or higher (http://www.php.net/)
• MySQL (or access to a server running this)
• A web server(Apache, IIS, etc)
• JavaScript-enabled browser (for bracket submission)

Installation

1. Extract the files from the archive. (in linux: tar -zxf mmm_vX.Y.Z.tar.gz)

2. Copy the tourney folder to a directory accessible from the web. (usually /somewhere/public_html/)

2a. It is STRONGLY suggested that you password protect the 'admin' directory with an .htpasswd file. There is a nice tool (http://www.clockwatchers.com/htaccess_tool.html) that can handle this if you don't know how. Many people have this functionality built into their cPanel. Otherwise, anyone will be able to mess around with the brackets and scoring, which could cause quite a bit of trouble.

3. Using phpMyAdmin, the command line, or any other method, create a database and user.
   Rename /admin/database.php.tmpl to database.php Edit /admin/database.php to contain the proper information. This is crucial in configuring the site.

4. Open your favorite web browser and point it at your installation directory.
   If you have not yet configured the site, a message should be displayed reminding you to set things up. Click this link and fill out all the necessary information. Click "Finish" and if no errors appear, you are good to go!

Other Notes:

• For a free pool, set the entry fee at 0. Users will automatically be marked as exempt from paying and the pot size will not be visible.
• Cut size should be entered in dollars and cents (i.e. 2.50) or percent (i.e. 5).
• If you do not have a mailserver, turn off notification emails.

Useage

Thankfully usage should be much easier than installation. Open up your favorite web browser and point it at the admin directory under the directory you installed March Madness Bracket Competition into. (eg. http://www.yoursite.com/admin/)

At this point you should have the admin menu up.

1. Once the bracket has been released, click "Initialize the Bracket" from the admin menu, or navigate to www.yoursite.com/admin/start.htm. From here, you may enter the matchups. Upon submitting this form, the competition officially begins! The submission form will become available and entries may be submitted.

2. You may now post/delete blog entries in a WYSIWYG editor.

3. You can modify the rules page as you wish, also through a WYSIWYG editor.
   I recommend including at least a deadline and some contact information for yourself.

4. The master bracket may be updated by clicking "Edit Master Bracket" at the admin menu or at www.yoursite.com/admin/bracket.php. The entire bracket is overwritten every time you modify it. Upon submitting the form, it automatically grabs the winners and losers of each game and runs the scoring script.

5. Payment tracking is available. Click the "Edit Paid List" to set each entrant's status. If you run a free pool, all users will be set as exempt. Users can view the list at www.yoursite.com/paid.php, which is linked through the sidebar.

6. NOTES on Paths To Victory Paths to vistory should not be run before the final 16 games. A great deal of information is calculated by this process, it is still possible that this may cause a timeout on your web server, which can cause partially computed results. If this should happen, the paths can be calculated manually on your server using this command line in your install directory: php ./admin/calculate_paths_to_victory.php truncate The final 'truncate' keyword is only needed if you have partial results calculated, as they must be cleaned up. Once 14 or fewer games remain, this function should be able to complete successfully from the browser unless you have a huge number of brackets, in which case the command line will still have to be used.

From the original authors README file

March Madness Bracket Competition will allow you and your friends to run a large NCAA tournament pool without having to manually score and collect a bunch of brackets.

LICENSE March Madness Bracket Competition is released under GPL 2.0.
Feel free to modify the script, but my only request is that you leave the copyright notice and link. It is written using PHP/MySQL and is meant to be run on a webserver by the administrator of the league. All administrative tasks may be performed from the 'admin' directory.

COPYRIGHT March Madness Bracket Competition is based on work done by Matt Felser in his "Matt March Madness" project, which is copyright 2007-2008 Matt Felser. Extensive additions and changes have been done requireing a split to this new project, "March Madness Bracket Competition" which is Copyright 2007-2008 by Matt Felser, and Copyright 2008-2011 Brian Battaglia, John Holder, and Robert Jailall. When redistributing this software, you must include this copyright notice.