I haven't actually used any event management systems that include registration, and your request is quite specific (sign up for every hour of the day). But after a quick bit of research you could perhaps try:
- JEvents (http://www.jevents.net/) - for Joomla 1.0 / 1.5 (use the latest beta)
- UHEvents (similar to above): http://joomlacode.org/gf/project/uhevents (download from http://sourceforge.net/project/platformdownload.ph...)
-JCal (apparently excellent, but you have to pay for it: 20 USD +): http://extensions.joomla.org/extensions/calendars-...

There are, of course, another 30+ event registration / calendars, and the above aren't necessarily the best for you, but I don't know of any that are specifically fit your needs (please update this thread with details of what you finally use! :-)

Alan

Appreciate those, but unfortunately not sure they'll work for me - already have JCal, but it doesn't (to my knowledge) provide a frontend form that people could sign up for their hour as such, and JEvents I presume is just the same type of calendar output, which would just confuse. Looking at the blurb for the last one, again, I don't think it'll really fit the bill either. Somewhat surprised that nobody has ever used anything similar to this before to have coded a mod for it, but perhaps as you say, it's a shade too specific. Wondering if maybe some sort of form might be better even if once again I'm going to have to do manual coding on it.

Thanks for trying anyway Alan - and absolutely if I do find anything else nearer the mark, I'll certainly update this so others can benefit.

Actually, the first thought I had when I saw your request was; 'Why not use a public Google calendar, embedded in the Joomla page?'. There are a number of Joomla extensions that facilitate this (or you could use another calendar such as 30Boxes or Yahoo, etc.). Obviously you'd have to play around with it a bit to get it to work as you'd want, but it should be possible to set up 24 events for each hour of the day, and allow people to add their name(s) in there.

But I have to agree with you - it's strange that it's hard to find something that would easily work.

Drupal seems to have the 'Event Manager' module, which you might want to look at just to get an idea of what you're looking for - a demo is here: http://em-demo.mind-sky.com/?q=event/2008/03/01/mo... (it provides day view with open registration for events, but I don't know if it will show attendees' names).

I hope you find something! It's the kind of thing that I would write if I had the time... :-)

Alan

PS - We had a week of prayer and fasting at the beginning of the year, but the sign up sheets were all of the paper type ... we don't have so many attendees as to warrant Internet registration!

Think we're maybe heading in the right direction - I may just have to change my own perspective on what I think I'm trying to achieve and instead try to work more within those calendar parameters you're suggesting. I'll certainly have a look at the Google version as that Drupal one is interesting, and it may well provide what I want.

Our church is heavily prayer motivated despite having only 200 members in total, of which probably only 80-100 max attend regularly, but out of that we would have about 50+ online and more than happy to use our website for many purposes which is great, and so as the 24-hr prayer slot was such a success last time, I really want to make it as good this time, if not better. Sadly just shot myself in the foot, as I remember vividly how excited I was telling my minister that the move to a CMS platform would provide much easier ways of undertaking such events easily on the site, only now to discover that's not always going to be the case LOL!!! Ah well, all good learning at the end of the day :)

Thanks again.
Romayne

Try this extension....

Com/Lan

http://extensions.joomla.org/extensions/calendars-...

I played around with it one night but don't remember if it had the ability for user groups to edit. I think it does but it has been a couple of extensions ago. Native J 1.0 and J 1.5 and free. Should work though.

Post a link in this forums if you find something that works please. I'm sure alot of people would like to see what solution you come up with.

Chris

Yes - looks promising Chris, good idea!

I think it would be great to create a list of recommended Joomla extensions on this forum (i.e. extensions we have good experience with), as a reference for each other. Anyone else think this would be useful?

I think this should be a separate forum thread, which if possible could be made 'sticky' in the Joomla forum (??).

Alan

Truly appreciate you all providing so many options for me to try out. It'll be a day or two before I can manage it - have just had to have my shoulder injected, and trying to rest it by staying off the PC/mouse etc for the next day or two, but will absolutely give these a go and come back to you with the outcome or a review of sorts at least on why they don't do the job. Thanks again. :) Romayne

You can check out it out here. A little klunky and the colors are off but you'll see what you are getting into.

http://www.joomchurch.com/index.php?option=com_eve...

Just need to get rid of the "Action buttons/colums" and it would probably be great for this.

Chris

Alan,

I agree we need a thread on extensions that work for christian/ministry needs. I think a stick would be awsome. Post the thread and I'll be the first to reply. ;)

Chris

Awesome work in setting that up so quick Chris, but doubt it might take me just a shade longer LOL!. At least wading through the instructions alone is taking me a while, but no doubt it'll become clearer once I get stuck in to doing it. But it certainly does look like what I'm after and you've got the concept spot on with your trial one. At least I've got time on my side as I've not yet been given a date for it, but this way, I'll be ready to go as soon as I get one.

This site is worth its weight in gold given the dual ethos, because looking at the flak over that Drupal Christian site, it shows how few out in the secular world have knowledge or tolerance of anything connected to Christianity, and I've certainly had problems before getting any responses to queries on other forums when I mention the site is a church one. So thanks to all who run this site and forum - I'm heavily appreciative!

At least wading through the instructions alone is taking me a while

Who reads instructions? :)

Chris

Yes - great to see that table working Chris, thanks.

I notice that you've got that 'Prayer Center' extension installed -- have you had much experience with it?

And yes, I'm very glad for this forum too. My only regret is that it is so heavily Drupal focused (although I give Matt and Rob credit - they try really hard to keep a balance, despite being long-term 'Drupalites'). Therefore I'd love to see a similar wealth of help and support for churches using / planning to use Joomla, since I know that this would have been such an incredible resource when we started down that road several years ago...

Alan

I'll create a new thread on the prayer center extension. Maybe we can get some others to weigh in.

Chris

Had a go at that Events table one just now, as it truly would seem to be exactly what I want, but for some reason it seems to want to conflict with almost everything I have on my site. First time I installed it and tried to access it from the Frontend it gave a Fatal error about memory relating to the Living Word module, so I thought, ok, maybe it's a conflict just with that, so I uninstalled the latter, but same thing. So I tried uninstalling ETE and reinstalling it, but now it comes up with the same error only relating to a different mod etc, and I suspect it would just keep on doing this until it was the only one left, and still find something wrong!!

Error msg along the lines of: Fatal error: Allowed memory size of 8388608 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 95885 bytes) in /home/bloomfie/public_html/J1.5/plugins/system/sef.php on line 68

May not be something I can really work with just yet as I see it's still in Alpha production (unless I've downloaded the wrong one). But perhaps by the time I need it, they'll have got it further refined, as obviously my error is specific to my setup.

I had a similar problem but not right out of the box. I was getting error messages when clicking on the "hide show" print Icon button on the back end. Other than that I have only seen minor bugs and have just about everything installed on the site including Living Word.

Alpha was what I downloaded as well. Would be a perfect solution for this need you have but not if it doesn't work.

You are running 1.5? Just making sure.

Oh yea, I really liked your site. Easy and clean. Keep it up.

Chris

This is what you were looking for...

http://www.joomchurch.com/index.php?option=com_eve...

I go into work tonight and will poke around for other alternatives just in case you are still hitting the wall. As well I'll check their forums on the Joomla site for work arounds. Can't do it now, have to cut the grass. Didn't look like there was much support but maybe I can find something if I dig enough.

Chris

Hi Romayne ... maybe it could be some other extension / module that you've installed (or your host server's 8MB memory is just too little for your site now)?
I visited your site yesterday, when you first listed it (nice looking site, by the way :-) ... and clicked on the prayer menu link on the left hand side - and got the same error as you mention. I don't know if you'd already installed the Events table there at that time or not, but it would be good to check the server / php logs (if you can), and/or switch Joomla into debug mode and try to run it again.

If you've never seen this error before, it could indeed be the module/extension (or combination of them) - typically a software error causing an infinite loop of some sort? Maybe you can contact the developer to find out more?
Unfortunately I don't have any more time at this moment to check this out further... :-/

Good luck...
Alan.

Just looking at your demo Chris - makes me think that perhaps I'd have to also somehow tie it in with church members registering so that I don't end up with spammers or others inadvertently joining in too, as this is meant to be purely a church membership function. It's another area I've not yet really done much with as we never wanted to make the site feel like it was a "member's club" only obviously, but for certain things like this I may have to consider that option. I might be able to put it onto a hidden page only visible by an email link I suppose, but that would miss out some people possibly, so will have to give that some thought too.

Coming back to the error msg - thanks for your input on it too guys, I'll check with the developer who's thankfully keeping up to date with such issues and see what s/he makes of it. Thanks again, Romayne