Jobify Review: A New WordPress Job Theme

Jobify is a new theme from Astoundify, the people behind the Fundify and Appify themes, and is an app theme for people wishing to run a job board website. Astoundify is run by the team behind MintThemes, who I have covered many times on WPLift, which generally means the theme will be designed well in a modern style and have solid coding behind it. Taking a look at Jobify for the first time seems no exception, I like the fresh look of this theme …

In this post I will be taking a closer look at the theme and how to set it up.

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Theme Installation

Once you have purchased and downloaded your zip file, upload it to the your hosting and visit the “Appearance” > “Themes” menu link and activate the theme :

Once you activate the theme you will see a message linking to 3 plugins which are recommended to use with this theme, they are WP Job Manager, Testimonials by WooThemes, Soliloquy Lite simply click the link for each one to install theme ( all are free plugins from the repository ). Personally I prefer this approach – a lot of other themes would build this functionality directly into the theme which would tie you into the theme, by using this approach you are able to change themes and retain functionality.

Install and activate those plugins and you can go on to configure the theme settings.

Import Dummy Content

If you view your site at this point you will see it looks pretty much like a normal blog theme so now we have to do some more setup to get it looking like a job board. The best way to do this is to import some dummy content which is included in folders in your zip download. You have XML dummy content and also Widget dummy content. To install these you will need to visit Tools > Import > WordPress and it will prompt you to install the WordPress importer plugin if you haven’t already. To import the widget content you will need the Widget Settings Importer/Exporter free plugin.

Customize the Homepage

There are loads of different modules you can use on the homepage to display various content, these are all placed with widgets. As follows :

• Blog Posts
• Callout
• Companies We’ve Helped
• Content Slider
• Hero Slider
• Interactive Map
• Pricing Table
• Stats
• Testimonials
• Video

Create Pages

Now you have some dummy content and your widgets imported, you will need to manually create some pages that are required by the theme and add a shortcode to each – these are listed in the theme documentation and you have 5 pages to create. The final thing to do is visit settings > reading > and set the homepage and blog pages to static like so :

If you visit the site now you will see it now looks like the demo site.

Adding Jobs / Testimonials

Adding jobs is a breeze, visit the “Job Listings” menu item which was created by the WP Job Manager plugin and you will see some dummy jobs added :

If you visit the “Testimonials” menu item you can see the dummy testimonials and can begin adding your own :

Customization

You can customize your theme’s colors and various other things like social media links and footer call to action by visiting “Appearance” > “Customize”

You can customize the header of the site by visiting “Appearance” > “Header” where you can change the text and colors or you can upload your own logo image

Add Ons

The Jobify theme supports a number of paid add-ons which will provide extra functionality. If you wish to charge for listings you need to purchase the Restrict Content Pro plugin which costs from $42 other supported plugins as follows :

• Simple Paid Listings
• Nav Menu Roles
• Job Colors for WP Job Manager
• Predefined Regions for WP Job Manager
• Simple Mail Chimp Sign Up Forms

Conclusion

This is a well made theme – the end result is very nice and will enable you to create a full featured job board. Where it falls down slightly is the setup – this is not a theme for beginners as the setup is quite a lengthy process. I have reviewed app style themes in the past where you just activate the theme and then visit the options panel to begin configuring it. With Jobify the setup process involves installing extra plugins and then further plugins to import dummy content. I can see this being quite complicated if you are new to WordPress and installing / configuring themes. If however you have experience you will find that this process gives you more control over the end result. It should be quite possible to create a unique job board using this theme and the use of external plugins such as the WP Job Manager plugin will make sure your content is separate from the theme should you wish to change it down the line.

It should be noted that the theme does include detailed documentation which guides you through every step of the installation process and full support is also provided should you get stuck.

The theme also supports other third-party plugins such as JetPack, Contact Form 7 etc , it is localized so you can translate quite easily and has retina support which is a nice touch.

All in all I think this is a high quality theme with a bit of a learning curve but if you spend a little more time on the initial setup you will be rewarded with an attractive and well-functioning job board.

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