Tech Geek

I received a question from a reader in Texas who asks, Are there sites where you can get volunteers or youth to sign up on a calendar, like for working shifts at a fundraiser? It sure seems like there should be. But I can't figure out any that are actually designed for this specific purpose. I looked around and searched lots of different sets of terms. There are some expensive paid software packages designed for businesses, but I didn't find anything simple and cost-effective for church groups. Do any of you know of something? What I have done in the past is use a wiki to accomplish this task. What is a wiki?

A wiki is a web page that is designed to be easily editable by any users. One of the best known wikis is the web encyclopedia, Wikipedia. The beauty of a wiki is that any person can add (or delete) content. To help guard against things disappearing that should have stayed there, most wiki software tracks all changes and allows moderators to revert to previous versions of the page if something was incorrectly (or maliciously) changed. There are a large number of wiki farms available at this list. A wiki farm is a website that you can build a wiki on, either for free or using a paid service. I have generated sign-up sheets using PBwiki in the past.

To create a wiki on PBwiki I start by logging in and selecting Create a New Wiki. If you need to create an account on PBwiki, go ahead, they're free. First I create a name, in the {name}.pbwiki.com format. I'm going to use seniorleague.pbwiki.com for my wiki. I'm going to make my wiki public, since users will need a password to edit it in either case. So on the next page I select public and I click the checkbox to agree to the Terms of Service.

The next page wants to sell me an upgrade. I am going to use the free version, so I click the link underneath where it says, Continue Trying out the Free Version. This takes me to my new wiki page. I could add any number of things here, but I really want to set up a schedule for a fundraiser, so I'm just going to click the link at the top right that says Create a Page. Then I'll enter the page name of Car Wash Schedule and pick the Schedule template before clicking the Create New Page button.

Then I'll edit the table to contain the information that I want it to contain. I'm setting up a sign-up sheet for a car wash. You can see it at seniorleague.pbwiki.com/Car-Wash-Schedule. The editor is fairly standard, you can add and delete rows and columns from the table by right clicking and making your choice. When I've edited to my heart's content, I'll set a few tags at the bottom, and click Save.

You can either add users to your wiki by entering their e-mail addresses or you can allow them to request access. I would use the latter mode as it is less typing. Because some folks may not want yet another account, I also provided the option for them to e-mail me and I'll update the sign-up sheet.

These basic steps could be used with any of the wiki farms to accomplish the same goal of having an online sign-up sheet. I'm not thrilled with this solution and  I still think there should be a more elegant way to do it, so if one of you has found it, please drop me a line! I'll keep looking and maybe have something different for a future post.

P.S. - You can use OpenID to login to pbwiki, and that's probably a subject for another post!