BuddyPress

Hello everybody,

For the last few months I have worked at a jobboard plugin for BP. I have now put up a test site at http://test.jobboardr.com.

These are the features so far:
* Groups are turned into employers and members into potential employees
* Members can create their own CVs
* CVs can be downloaded as PDF
* CVs conform to the hResume micro-format
* Every group can have it’s own jobboard
* Directory page with all available jobs
* Job overview pages for members and groups
* An optional API for external requests
* RSS feeds for group specific jobs and global jobs
* Basic privacy controls for CVs

Future features might include this:
* A custom made theme
* Various widgets
* Twitter/FB/Ping.fm integration
* More privacy controls

I am working at the moment on integrating PayPal IPN, which should be ready in a day or two.

Give it a whirl, create some groups and jobs, apply to some jobs and let me know what’s good or bad. There will still be some bugs, though, so not everything might be working as expected. It’s still in beta at the moment.
A lot of hours have already gone into developing this plugin, so note that there’ll be a price tag attached to the plugin. Likely to be around 100 Euros.

Cheers,
Boris

@travel-junkie – that’s an interesting plugin – we had a project a few months back where it would have been useful. I’ve also just posted to say we need a job board on BuddyPress.org. I’ve got a couple of projects that could use a freelance BP developer, but nowhere to advertise the opportunities.

Curious, you say a theme but it’s the default. Is there a custom theme?

[edit] saw you have it coming

@travel-junkie I’m desperately seeking a simple plugin which will allow a user to attach a PDF CV to their profile. How do the CV’s work in your plugin or do you know a way I can do this?
Thanks so much!

Just bumping this as I overlooked it and it seems a pretty cool idea

@rossagrant
CVs can be generated by user input. The data then gets stored in the database and is being presented on a page that is only accessible by group admins the user is a member of. By applying for a job a user automatically joins a group. In addition to all that a CV can be downloaded as a PDF file, that is generated on the fly.

@djpaul
Cheers! But as it is with self-imposed deadlines… Something came up and I’m a bit (read: like a month) behind my schedule, but I’ll post here once it’s been released.

@travel-junkie This sounds pretty sweet! Is there a way of modifying what gets filled in on a person’s CV? I am running a website for actors so a CV for an actor is a little different. It includes a photograph and other fields that aren’t typical. Can you customise the CV functionality?

Also Can you make a CV on your test site, I’d like to have a go.

I am aware that CVs have different formats from one country to the next, so future versions will provide a way to completely customize any aspect of a CV.

This will be loosly based on the new way of generating and sorting profile fields in the BP trunk and on CV templates provided by users of JobBoardr.

Once you signed up to the test site, you can set up your own CV already and then generate a PDF file from it. The user-avatar gets automatically included as of now. The project that sidetracked me from finishing the first stable version of JobBoardr doesn’t actually need all the CV extravaganza, so a CV-rewrite will come with version 1.1.

Saying that, if you know a bit of PHP and OOP it’ll be easy to adjust the function responsible for outputting the PDF file. You’d also need to adjust the theme template for the CV, but that can be copied over to a child theme and does not involve any core-JobBoardr modifications.

What you get out of the box right now is basically an English CV (the one I used when I lived there). I am German, so I’ll provide a German CV as well. Other than that any other templates will have to be provided by users of JobBoardr.

@travel-junkie Just looked at the CV creator and you know, this could be phenomenal!
The only thing I would need extra really is the ability to change the fields that appear in the CV (in the same way you can add profile fields etc in BP) That would be absolutely superb. Also the avatar doesn’t appear when you download the CV as a PDF. Is that supposed to happen? It would be great to get the avatar also.

Cheers!

If you can make the plugin customisable in terms of the CV profile fields I’ll definitely be buying a copy of this off you!

Just checked on my test install and it seems that right now only uploaded avatars get displayed. Shouldn’t be too hard to include gravatars as well. I’ll upload the trunk version onto the test site within the next couple of days.

The work for the customisable CV fields is actually done already, just for a different plugin I’ve been working on. All I need to do is adjust it for the CV component. It’s not a lot of work, but right now I’m tied up in another project. Might be another couple weeks for a stable release…

@travel-junkie Cool, I’m really excited about this! Noticed on your site there are no forums. I take it that you can still have full BP functionality with forums but with each group having an optional job board?

One last question. If I only want to give certain users the ability to post jobs in a job board tab say for just one group, is that possible.
For example, I may have a user who I want to create a group for with a job board. Can I give them permission just to be able to post jobs on that ONE job board and no others. I want to give individual companies their own board you see and have them only able to admin that specific board.
Cheers!

@travel-junkie Oh, one very last question and then I’ll stop bothering you I promise! Hahaha! Is it at all possible to have JUST the CV creator installed?

Depending on what my client wants it might be to begin with that he just wants members to be able to post their CV’s to their profile for others to browse and download?
Would this be a separate lighter weight plugin that we could buy before going for the full job board if necessary.

I really do love this plugin, I can see so many projects I want to create using this!

The jobboard component is group specific. That means that each group has it’s own jobboard and group admins can only admin their own jobboard. Jobboard creation, as of now, can’t be interfered with. Making a jobboard opt-in and then giving certain users/admins/groups the rights to create a jobboard should be quite trivial though. That’s actually a really good idea and I’ll add that to version 1.1. That’d be really usefull for sites that are not only a jobboard.

Posting jobs on a group jobboard is limited to only the group admins. You could easily extend that to group mods as well, but anything else doesn’t really make any sense.Every user can apply to any job, though, obviously.

I’ve actually been thinking about what to do with the CV part of the component. I’ve basically got 3 choices right now.

1. Leave it as it is right now. CVs are part of the main component and can be deactivated, but do not work as a stand-alone plugin. Not a big fan of this.

2. Make the CV bits a stand-alone plugin. If JobBoardr is present, then integrate it. Downside of that option is, that you’d have to purchase 2 plugins instead of just 1 if you want the job bits as well.

3. Build a cheapish web service with an API that integrates with JobBoardr.

I quite like option 2 for better flexibility. Option 3 will only be viable if the CV component grows too big (which it might do…). To be honest, option 1 probably won’t last…

What do you think?

@travel-junkie I would 100% go with option 2. I have many clients who would love for people to be able to attach their CV to their profile. I do a lot of sites for actors and models and this is absolutely perfect if the actors/ models can post their CV’s to their profiles for people to download as a PDF.

One project I am working on this minute would be made SO much better with just the CV option.

I for one wouldn’t mind at all in buying 2 seperate plugins – 1 for CV’s and one for job board if at a later stage it was necessary.

If you were looking at the full job board experience as a 100 Euro plugin then why not sell just the CV component for fraction of that and then promote the full jobboard add on as a premium upgrade.

You could even give away the CV component as a taster of what can be done with job board. that way it gets hundrerds of sites using it, becoming aware of it and a good percentage of those will no doubt want to expand and buy the full jobboard as a result.

Splitting the 2 components could well be a canny marketing ploy.
People will use the CV component and then realise they soon need the upgrade.

What do you think?
I for one would love the CV component whether it’s free or a paid plugin. How easy would it be for you to create the CV component as a standalone? If you can add in the customisation we spoke about before in terms of editing fields and meta data on the CV I’ll put my name down for it now!