Okay, so your inquiry has inspired me to try this out and here is what would seem to work:
- Create a Moodle course
- In that course's Settings area...
- set the Format to "topics"
- set the Course start date to the day of your course
- make your course available to users (for registration purposes)
In the course itself...
- hide the course topics until the day the course begins (this allows folks to register in advance without seeing the course content)
I have tried this out and it seems to work just fine. Does this solution do what you want it to do?