I unveiled a new project today. I launched an updated and greatly enhanced version of a custom Drupal module that collects registration information from event participants, books them into their various categories or classes, and of course, collects registration fees.

Check the screen shot included below to see what it looks like.

It's amazing how these projects develop. I began work on this several months ago as a way to help out a friend who promotes bike races. I bet I tried 25 different ways to do it using various combinations of off-the-shelf Drupal modules. None of them worked.

I finally decided the only way to do this right would be to roll up my sleeves and create a custom event registration module for Ubercart myself.

What you see here is actually not even the first version. I suppose a developer might give it a name something like version 1.3. The first version fulfilled only basic functionality. This version is capable of registering cyclists for USACycling events and for charity rides-for-a-cause, the kind where participants pay a fee and can optionally donate something extra "for the cause".

On the back end the module will create tabs so participants can see who else has registered, and for the sufficiently privileged, download a CSV file with all the registration information. Promoters love this. They use all that data to create start lists, registration sheets, and results forms.

Now that I have version 1.x out the door, I'm chock full of ideas for version 2.0. High on the list will be to streamline the process of creating the configuration of fields a promoter may require. This will make it a snap to customize the registration form for particular types of events.

For now, I'm content to have a few really happy event promoters enjoying my work. Maybe after the weekend I'll wade into the process of remaking it into something bigger and better.