Design your way

Monday, April 28, 2014

There are some things we’ll always need in our lives; things that are essential for our comfort and that carry the promise of the future. Yes, I’m aware that it sounds like the slogan of an ad for life insurance, but this is the naked truth. We require shelter, clothes, food, medicine, entertainment, and so on, and so forth.

All of the above is generally brought about by something that everyone is always after: money… which brings us to the starting point of out article. If you want to earn money (and by “earning”, we mean honestly), you have to get one. And how do you find it? – By going through job listings, of course.

Before now, people in search of a job used to turn to newspapers or notice boards. But over the past 20 years, job hunting has made the leap into the online environment. Internet and computers provide much better chances of landing your dream job.

The heavy demand for workforce and jobs created an extraordinary industry. In the very beginning, we had Classified job sites that drew on massive investments, because web technology as a whole was in its infancy. Therefore, any such type of project remained inaccessible to common people. Unless you had the right budget to set up a website of these proportions, the odds of coming through were close to nil.

As far as I can recall, the first real job board was launched in 1992 by Bill Warren, and it went by the name of Online Career Center. It was acquired by TMP after all, in 1995, and merged with Monster.

Job websites have come a long way since then, both in terms of their own evolution, as well as the evolution of the actual technology behind them.

Today we have websites like flex jobs, StackOverflow, It’s Nice That Jobsboard, or We Work Remotely. But where is yours?

Thanks to our current technological heights, virtually anyone can pull through this kind of website nowadays – with less than $200 and minimum WordPress expertise. It sounds incredible, right? Well, read on.

Ingredients to a recipe called “Create your own job board”

Let’s assume that you’re in front of the computer and wish to create this sort of website, but all you’ve got for now is an idea; nothing else.

Step one: Name your website. You may be surprised to learn that this step usually takes the most time to complete. If it comes to you too soon, make sure the domain name that you have in mind for your site isn’t downright silly. If the domain has a shabby ring to it, everything goes to pots. Case in point if you need to feel the full force of this argument: does therapistfinder.com sit well with you?

Step two: After you’ve come up with the perfect name for your future site, it’s time to secure web hosting. A word of advice: don’t be a cheapskate and don’t go for shared web hosting straight away, even though $9/month for unlimited storage and traffic seems like a great bargain. Search for quality service, but don’t throw your money out the window. Start with a VPS and make sure it’s upgradeable.

Step three: Let’s build the site. Now that you have a domain and hosting, the real work begins. Actually, “work” is a bit of an overstatement because everything will go very smoothly. First off, you need a freshly installed WordPress platform. Generally speaking, you can run the installation process from the control panel of your hosting, but failing that, download this archive.

Afterwards, you have to install a WPJobBoard – WordPress Job Board Software, which is paramount, because this is what transforms your website into a job board.

Say hello to WPJobBoard

This plugin does the work of an entire team of web developers at a fraction of the cost, and just a few seconds.

There you go, now you have your own job board!

WPJobBoard is one of the best plugins I’ve ever laid my eyes on. Not only does it provide an ideal platform for job notices, but you can also tap into the following features:

1. You can use any WordPress theme, as the plugin is 100% compatible. Moreover, it also blends perfectly with WP “frameworks”, such as WooFramework, Genesis, Headway, Thesis and others.

2. It has a wonderful visual editor. With the drag-and-drop function, you can easily edit and manage all fields pertaining to your job/resume/application forms.

3. You get full documentation and first-rate customer support. If you have any technical difficulties, feature requests, a plea for modification or for configuration, the assistance team is quick to answer and eager to give a helping hand. They will even troubleshoot WPJobBoard on your own server. On top of everything, a rich Knowledge Base offers user guides, tutorials, and further documentation.

4. Multiple marketing features. To put it simply, WPJobBoard refers your jobs to popular job aggregators like Google Base, SimplyHired, Juju, and Indeed, as well as posting them automatically on Twitter. Furthermore, you also get job alerts & feeds, and email notifications.

You will gain access to loads of handy widgets, have total control over your posts, and even let your users be alerted via email or RSS.

Finally, know that you can set a payment system for premium announcements. Overall, this plugin has so many valuable features, that you had better see it in action. Click the image below to activate a demo version.