From time to time around the year, members of the Mahalo sports team may wish to add brackets to their Mahalo topic pages, especially in cases of playoffs and perhaps most commonly with the March Madness NCAA Basketball tournaments. This guide explains how to create and how to operate brackets on Mahalo.

Brackets are used for a number of sporting events including March Madness, the MLB Playoffs, NFL Playoffs, NHL Playoffs, NBA Playoffs and some Olympic sports. Each sport or league uses their own format for the playoffs, with many using a single-elimination, bracket-style tournament to determine the national champion. For instance, the March Madness bracket consists of 64 teams divided into four regional brackets with 16 teams each. Major League Baseball uses eight teams for its playoff, the National Football League 12 and the National Hockey League and National Basketball Association using 16 teams each.

To create and use brackets on Mahalo, first you'll need to determine which type of bracket is appropriate for the specific event and find the wiki code for that specific blank bracket.

Once the framework of the blank bracket is added to a page, it will need to be updated as games are played and teams are eliminated or move on to the next round. Updating brackets, including adding the teams when they are first determined before the event begins, is not as hard as it may look once you understand the specific elements of the code and where which piece of information needs to be placed. To make things easier, each of the examples, as well as the blank bracket code available on Mahalo has notes that signify which round, position and type of information is used there.

This step-by-step guide explains how to add, fill in and update a variety of brackets on Mahalo. Mahalo Sports vertical manager Jeff Hoard and team member Angie are also available for help with the bracket creation or updating if necessary.

As the first step of the process, you'll need to determine which of the specific brackets you need for your specific event, find the starter code for that bracket and paste it on your Mahalo topic page.

1. Determine which type of bracket you need for the specific event.
   1. March Madness starts with four 16-team brackets
   2. NBA and NHL Playoffs use one 16-team bracket each.
   3. NFL Playoffs use a 16-team bracket, however the tournament begins with only 12 teams.
   4. MLB Playoffs use an eight-team bracket.
   5. The Final Four round of March Madness uses a four-team bracket.
2. Visit Mahalo's printable blank bracket topic page to find the code for the specific type of bracket you need. Blank templates for 16-team, eight-team and four-team brackets are available. (If you do not have adequate permissions to edit the printable blank bracket page, you can grab the code via this Google Doc.)
3. Find the specific bracket and click the edit button on the corresponding section (the pencil icon) to view the code.
4. Copy all of the code in that section, then click cancel on the edit window to exit out of the editor.
5. Go to your Mahalo topic page and add a text section to either the content section or links section using the drop-down menus in the page builder sidebar on the right.
6. Paste the entire code within the body of that text section. Don't forget to add a section title in the top field as well.
7. Click save and wait for the system to process the save. This may take several seconds.
8. If all goes well, you should see the blank bracket appear on your page.

Understand the Bracket Coding: Now that you have the code you need for your bracket, it's time to understand the individual parts of the code so you can learn how to fill it in and update it as the tournament progresses. Each section is labeled to help you understand which piece of code corresponds to each piece of information. Click the images to see larger versions.

Round Labels

• As shown in the image above, this portion of the code, located at the very top of the entire bracket code, is where the round labels or titles are edited. In this example, the rounds are labeled First round, Second round, Semifinals and Finals like:

• The text for each of the labels are typed after the identifying tags like <!--RD1-->, <!--RD2-->, etc. As seen in the code example, First round is typed after the <!--RD1-->, Second round typed after the <!--RD2--> and so on.

Seeds, Teams and Scores

Each part of the bracket consists of three parts, the seed, team name and score for that specific round. Similarly, the bracket code contains groups of code sections, each which corresponds to one area of a the bracket. Learning how to find the specific area you need to fill in is key to understanding how to fill in and update the bracket as the tournament progresses.

1. Looking at the example above, you can see three lines, each with a <!--RD1-seed01-->, <!--RD1-team01--> or <!--RD1-score01--> identifying tag at the end. The RD1 refers to the round of the tournament, with RD1 acting as the first, or left-most round of the tournament. Along the same lines, RD2 would refer to the second round, RD3 the third round and RD4 referring to the fourth, or right-most round, generally the finals. A 16-team bracket will have four rounds, eight-team bracket three rounds and a four-team bracket two.
2. Now that you know which round each portion of code corresponds to, look for the second portion of the identifying tag, which will say for example seed01, team01 or score01. The word refers to which piece of information goes in that area, the seed of the team, the team name or the score of that team in that round.
3. The last portion of each identifying tag refers to which position within each round the portion of code refers to. <!--RD1-seed01-->, <!--RD1-team01--> and <!--RD1-score01--> refers to the first position in the first round, <!--RD2-seed01-->, <!--RD2-team01--> and <!--RD2-score01--> refers to the top or first position in the second round and so on. This gets tricky lower in the bracket as for instance <!--RD1-seed16-->, <!--RD1-team16--> and <!--RD1-score16--> refers to the bottom or lowest position in the table, which is not necessarily the team with the 16th seed. Refer to this example as reference to determine which identifying tag corresponds to which position on the table.

As the coding for brackets can be intricate, it's important to know which parts of the code should not be touched or edited at any time. These small parts control the spacing and formatting for the brackets and must remain as is for the bracket to show properly.

1. The opening and closing code for the bracket should not be altered. This is very important for both keeping the bracket displaying properly as well as the rest of the page. Should part of the code, specifically the closing portion, be omitted or altered, it can cause the rest of the page to display improperly or disappear completely.

2. Under the top portion of code used for the round titles, there is a list of "width" markers. Leave these as they are and do not alter or move them. The width tables look like:

3. Anything on a line before the <!-- should also not be altered at all as this controls the size and spacing for the individual bracket cells. Do not edit or move any of this code:

4. Other smaller bits of code within the brackets should not be altered as well. This works to keep the spacing in the proper format. These include bits of code that look like:

Now that you know how to find the correct portion of code needed to edit each seed, team and score, as well as which parts of the code should never be edited, it's time to fill it in as the tournament progresses.

1. Start with the round labels or titles, adjusting the titles should specific names for each round, such as Regional Semifinals and Regional Finals in March Madness regional brackets, be used. If you'd like to add a second line of text to the round labels, place the information going on that second line after a <br /> tag.
2. For each team in each round, find the specific portion of code that corresponds to the one you need, looking for the identifying tags (like <!--RD2-seed01-->). Remember that the numbers for the specific position within each round will not necessarily match the seed given to each team, but only the position on the bracket within that round.
3. After the --> on each line, enter the specific information needed. Remember to place the seed, in numbers, after the <!--RD2-seed01--> identifying tag, the team after the <!--RD2-team01--> identifying tag and the score for that team in that round after the <!--RD2-score01--> identifying tag.
4. Continue on to fill in each section of the bracket based on what information is known at a given time. For example, the first round seeds and teams would be filled in when the participating teams are named and seeded, while the score for the first round and the teams participating in the second round will be known after the first round is completed.