We just finished testing version 4.3.0 and it is now available for download via automatic downloads or client panel. The new release is an effect of 3 months of hard work (both programming and testing) to improve WPJobBoard core, while most of the changes you might not notice on the first sight, you should be able to appreciate them after longer examination.
The one major change that took most of our time is atomizing the job board. For now whole job board was embedded into two pages Jobs and Resumes, now you can select on which pages you will put each piece of functionality, it’s basically like building a job board from Lego blocks, except you will be using shortcodes. While i am on it there is now 15+ shortcodes to choose from, every one of them is already documented in Shortcodes Knowledge Base.
We also added support for Custom Post Types (in jobs, resumes and companies), so the data should be better indexed in Google, look better when publishing on Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn and offer the best compatibility with third party plugins like Yoast SEO.
Note: All this is enabled by default when starting a new job board, for existing sites you need to go wp-admin / Settings (WPJB) / Default Pages and URLs panel and enable Shortcoded mode and Custom Post Types there. Additionally you will need to configure the default pages. If you are upgrading the best place to get started is new Getting Started article in KB.
Customer often complained that employers and candidates who register on site do not know what to do next, we listened and below is the result:
Candidate Dashboard. This is a page Candidate can see right after registration, it lists every action the candidate can take, additionally we inserted progress bar indicating resume completion and hopefully encouraging candidate to fill the whole resume.
Employer Dashboard. Similarly like with candidates this is a panel employers can see after registering.
Currently this panels are static, that is they cannot be extended with additional functionality, but soon enough we are planning to extend both by adding new modules and by allowing to insert new functionality via programming interface (API).
Other two worth mentioning features are, improved advanced search result page (this is actually something i posted on Facebook some time ago so you might be already familiar with it), we wanted an interface that will allow to quickly (with a single click) customize the search results page and subscribe the current search results by email or RSS
Finally a feature that you often asked about. Customizable Google Map shortcode with list of jobs, resumes or companies, with ability to filter the results by keyword, location and radius. The search bar on the screenshot is actually another shortcode that is bundled in a free addon. We had this idea that we do not want to lock you with standard / out-of-box filter but rather provide tools to customize the map filter. Of course if you like out filter feel free to use it.
The map is rather big (well it’s best to display big maps as it is easier to browse view the data then) so you need to click on the image above to see it in full size.
Other than that we have some minor tweaks and updates:
- We examined some of the client sites and improved the job board CSS, so the jobs should look even better with your WordPress theme.
- The Recent Jobs widget has some options to filter the jobs that it will be displaying.
- Shortcode that allows to list companies (similarly like with jobs and resumes), so basically browsing companies is now possible.
- Job aggregation feeds can now be filtered by adding params to the URL so instead of sending all jobs to Indeed, SimplyHired etc., you can send them jobs filtered by keyword, location, type, category or even custom fields.
- Stripe integration will now also send payment Receipt automatically
- As always any reported or found bug or issue was fixed in the latest release.
Along with WPJobBoard 4.3.0 we are also releasing Jobeleon 1.2.0, if you are using Jobeleon on your site we do recommend to upgrade it in order to take advantage of all new features.
Now your turn. What do you think about this release? Would you like to see some other feature instead of the ones we added?