WordPress is being used more and more recently to power various types of websites other than blogs, replacing the need for scripts dedicated to one type of site. A premium theme company that I recently came accross is AppThemes. They specialise in WordPress themes that allow you to run certain kinds of sites, they currently have ClassiPress which turns WordPress into a classifieds website and JobRoller which turns it into a job board. They also have some themes in development which look interesting, a coupon code site, business directory and a How-To app (I’m really interested in this one!).
AppThemes have been kind enough to provide me with a review copy of JobRoller for the purpose of this guide, so I will walk you through the creation of a Job Board site with WordPress.
- You can purchase JobRoller for yourself for $69
- Use Coupon code to get 10% off : WPLIFT – Get it for $62.1
The Domain
As I focus mainly on all things WordPress related, I figured I would setup a WordPress job board for this guide. I wont be promoting this site, its just for the guide – the demo site will be setup on JOBSWORDPRESS.COM – you can visit there to see a working demo of the theme.
Installing The Theme
Once you have WordPress installed, download the theme from AppThemes and unzip it. Inside this zip there is a readme file and another zip file named jobroller.zip. In your WordPress admin screen, click “Appearance” > “Themes” > “Install Themes” > “Upload” you will now be presented with an upload box, use this to upload the jobroller.zip file.
Now click “Activate” under the JobRoller theme :
Before we start configuring the theme, visit “Settings” > “Permalinks” and tick “Custom Structure” and enter this in the box : /%postname% that will make the site use nice search engine friendly urls instead of the default WordPress ones.
Configuring the Job Board
Once you have the theme enabled, you will see in your admin sidebar, two new menus; “JobRoller” and “Jobs”. JobRoller is where you configure the theme options and “Jobs” is created using custom taxonomies to allow you to add a job, setup job categories, job types and salary ranges.
Select “JobRoller” > “Settings” so we can set up the general settings for the board. In this section you have a choice of 7 different color schemes, I opted for the blue theme. Here is where you can enter a custom logo url, feedburner, twitter, facebook and share this IDs which will be plugged into your theme. If you use Google Analytics you can place the code here also.
After the site configuration you will see the page and category ID config, you can leave these as they are as the default pages and categories are automatically created when the theme is activated :
After this is a general options section, where you can configure various things such as whether to allow job description editing, whether to moderate new jobs and so on. They are all fairly self-explanatory so decide which options suit your site best.
Click “Save Changes” and we can move on to the next section.
Security Settings
The next tab along is “Security”, here you can choose who has access to the WordPress admin panel or “Back Office” as named here, I would leave that as admin only unless you have staff working for the site who would require it. The next part is for reCaptcha settings, a free Captcha service from Google. I recommend you activate this by signing up for an account and entering your keys that are provided. The last part is a simple security question to again, help prevent spam. You can leave this as default.
Advertising Settings
If you wish to include advertising on your job board, the next tab along is where you can place banners. Simply paste the code into the two boxes – top one for the header banner and the bottom one for a banner on job listings pages.
Advanced Settings
The final tab under settings, is “Advanced”, you wont need to touch this – it contains settings for debug mode, using Google’s version of jQuery and settings if you want to change the Custom Post Type & Taxonomy URLs.
Emails
The next item on the “JobRoller” menu is emails, this is simply where you define when people should receive emails from your site, it also allows you to create a customised welcome email for new registrations.
Pricing
Next on the “JobRoller” menu is pricing, here you can set a price for submitting a job, relisting a job, featuring a job and which currency is to be used on your site. There is also a tab called “Gateways”, click on this and enter your Paypal email address and enable the Paypal IPN. Hit save and you are setup to accept payments on your site.
Job Packs
Next on the “JobRoller” menu is “Job Packs” – here you can create packages that customers can purchase for bulk job postings, if you create job packs then the previous pricing will be overrided. I have chosen not to use this option – I will just charge a flat fee for job listings.
Integration
Integration is a nice feature, it allows you to pull job listings from Indeed.com, all you need to do is signup for a free account. Once you have signed up for an account, login and click “XML Feed”, scroll down and you will see Your publisher ID is “xxxxxxxxxx” this is what you will need to enter into the integration tab.
To setup which jobs you would like pulled from the Indeed XML Feed, in the box provided enter the job requirements in the following format : keyword|limit|country|job type|post to job category (slug) You can see which job types you can use in the guide here.
Orders
The next menu item is “Orders” use this when you have actual orders to check things like who posted it, the order date, cost etc.
System Info
Here you can check the details of the web hosting you are using to make sure everything is ok, also allows you the option to delete the JobRoller database and delete your config options, so leave alone unless you wish to reinstall your site from new.
Jobs Menu
The other menu that is added by the plugin is the “Jobs” menu, in this menu you can:
- View Jobs that are live (including ones from indeed.com feed)
- Add a job by hand
- Edit or add new job categories
- Edit or add new job types (eg freelance / full time etc)
- Edit or add job tags
- Create Salary ranges
Conclusion
I have been extremely impressed with the JobRoller theme – the design is nice and clean and I can see how it could be easily customised to fit your site so you could use JobRoller as an add-on to an established site. This is how I see this theme working best, it could definately justify the $69 price by adding a new revenue stream to your site.
The back end is well organised – it provides a lot of features and customisability but the admin panel is not overwhelming, as you can see from this guide. I like that it makes use of WordPress 3.0 new features such as custom post types and taxonomies.
All in all, a solid theme from AppThemes, well worth the asking price – I look forward to seeing their future themes.
- Purchase this theme for $69 from App Themes
- Use Coupon code to get 10% off : WPLIFT – Get it for $62.1
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42 Comments
The %postname% slug in permalinks is actually *not* the best one you can use:
http://ottopress.com/2010/category-in-permalinks-considered-harmful/
Thanks, Andrea. Is it better to use year/month/post_name than year/post_name?
I am assuming year and month are auto-generated when a post or page is made, right? Is this rule applicable to the most recent version of WordPress and are they applicable to both posts and pages? I will be using the job roller theme mentioned above.
year/postname is fine too.
It’s not applicable to the pages themselves. They still get yoursite/pagename whatever you pick.
This is for all versions of WordPress, not just the latest.
Great article!
Can you moderate every listing before it goes live so as to avoid spamming?
How would you delete old entries – do they auto delete after a certain date?
Could you install it into a category of a main website http://www.website.com/jobdesk/ ?
Hi David,
Yes, you can moderate all jobs before they go live.
Old entries are removed when they expire
Yes you can install in a site directory.
Thanks oli. I was worried about users that sign up who might spam if it was a free jobs board.
Do you reckon it would be best to install a dedicated app theme like JobRoller into a dedicated install of WP? And likewise say one of their other themes if you were using it – say if you had a Directory.
So you might have a homepage blog on it’s own basic WP install too.
It depends how your site is setup David,
Thats probably how I would go using WordPress Multi-Site : http://codex.wordpress.org/Create_A_Network
I am interested in using this software. Is there a feature to include my jobs on indeed.com? I want my jobs to be automatically submittied to indeed but they require you to have an xml feed of your job listing. can you please help?
Thanks, Josh
Is there a way to have my jobs from JobRoller appear on indeed? They require you to have a xml feed to automatically include your jobs in the indeed search results. Do you have any recommendations?
its very-very cool, isn’t. I always love all appthemes created themes. I have used one for my blog. Take a look at http://warungiklan.tk/
Im thinking getting this plugin. But i find you dont linkedin plugin. Will you add this plugin anytime soon?
is it possible to use this theme but not as an employer
say i teach programming – so the theme will allow me to post :-
i teach programming, contact me 09033
but not to apply jobs
thank u
is it possible to use this theme but not as an employer
say i teach programming – so the theme will allow me to post :-
i teach programming, contact me 09033
but not to apply jobs
thank u
Ive got a slight issue with job roller. As soon as an employer gets to the first paypal page ie login it then thinks they have paid so places the listing and says i made money. Any thoughts
cheers rory
Ive got a slight issue with job roller. As soon as an employer gets to the first paypal page ie login it then thinks they have paid so places the listing and says i made money. Any thoughts
cheers rory
Ive got a slight issue with job roller. As soon as an employer gets to the first paypal page ie login it then thinks they have paid so places the listing and says i made money. Any thoughts
cheers rory
Ive got a slight issue with job roller. As soon as an employer gets to the first paypal page ie login it then thinks they have paid so places the listing and says i made money. Any thoughts
cheers rory
Ive got a slight issue with job roller. As soon as an employer gets to the first paypal page ie login it then thinks they have paid so places the listing and says i made money. Any thoughts
cheers rory
Ive got a slight issue with job roller. As soon as an employer gets to the first paypal page ie login it then thinks they have paid so places the listing and says i made money. Any thoughts
cheers rory
Hello.
This looks like what I need.
Would it work with the WordPress Multilingual Plugin?
http://wpml.org/
Great plugin, I can try it. Thanks
I’m not at all tech savvy. I have a recruiting company and would be interersted in getting something like this up and running. I have a domain already and would purchase the app. I’d love to get a quote from someone in terms of getting it installed. I could add jobs, etc I just need someone to assist me in the initial set up. Any takers? Please email me at miaharmon114@gmail.com or charmon@destinystaffing.com Thanks in advance for any assistance :)
Thanks It is working fine for my end. What i want to ask I Need to add the signup fields for Registrant how it will be possible?
Can I implement oher employment sources like Simpl Hired until my site attacts employers to post positions so it will not be an empty site when the visit the site.
How to remove Post By in Jobroller theme?
actully i want to remove Author ( post by from job listings)
Hello Oliver,
Do we have option to charge a job seeker for posting a resume?
Regards,
Gaurav Jain
Hi, Great article.
I just bought a jobroller child theme from this site http://www.jobthemes.com, they are offering good
I am not promoting here for them, but seriously, thier themes are the best for jobroller.
I use jobroller on my website. Does very well for itself.
http://www.jobortwo.com
Hi, Google analytics doesn’t seem to know how to register the conversionpage after à candidate has applied for a job. Can someone refer to that? And maybe have à suggestion?
Thx milo
i have an issue with the job seeker registration page ID. I don’t know how to sort this out. when a user clicks create account, he is not transferred to a new page. please help
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