Build your own Job Board with Jobberbase

I recently released a developer job board built with Jobberbase, an open-source job board software written in PHP/MySQL. While I can’t recommend it for a large job networking site, it is a great piece of software for adding a simple job board to your existing website. I thought I would give a quick rundown on its features, installation process, and some customization tips to get you started.

Features

Below, I’ve listed some of the features of Jobberbase:

• Post jobs without an account.
• Search for jobs (ajax).
• Apply for jobs.
• Administer jobs via admin panel (edit/delete/activate/deactivate).
• RSS feeds.
• Job widget.

Installation

These are the installation instructions from the Jobberbase readme.txt file:

1. Make sure you have PHP 5+ and MySQL 4.1+ installed. Also, Apache module mod_rewrite should be enabled.
2. Create a new database and import __db/jobberbase.sql into it.
3. Open config.php and update the following constants so they suit your environment:
   - DB_HOST, DB_USER, DB_PASS, DB_NAME, NOTIFY_EMAIL, ADMIN_EMAIL, SITE_NAME
4. Following directories need write access:
   /uploads (uploaded resumes are temporary stored here)
   /_templates/_cache (smarty cache)
5. If your host doesn’t offer the mysqli PHP extension (find out from phpinfo()),
   you can use a mysql wrapper instead.Open config.php and just replace <require_once ‘_includes/class.Db.php’> with
   <require_once ‘_includes/class.Db.MySql.php’>.
6. That’s it, open a browser and type in the URL (e.g. http://localhost/jobberbase/).
7. The admin panel is available at http://localhost/admin/ with the default username “admin” and password “admin”.

Customizing It

After following the installation directions on the Jobberbase website, you should customize your new job site. A lot of Jobberbase sites end up looking exactly the same as the original, simply because they change the logo and nothing else. You don’t want to do that.

Jobberbase uses Smarty Templates

If you are not familiar with Smarty, you can read up on it here. Smarty templates are great because they separate the presentation layer from the application layer, which is always a good thing. However, you still have the ability to run your own code within the Smarty templates, which can sometimes be necessary as well. Smarty.net explains the reasoning well here:

One of Smartys primary design goals is to facilitate the separation of application code from presentation. Typically, the application code contains the business logic of your application, written and maintained in PHP code. This code is maintained by programmers. The presentation is the way your content is presented to the end user, which is written and maintained in template files. The templates are maintained by template designers.

After you’ve installed Jobberbase, you should have the following folder structure (minus the ‘phpmyadmin’ folder):

You are going to want to dive into the ‘css’ and ‘_templates’ folder to modify your site design. No need to touch anything else for now. The ‘css’ folder is pretty self-explanatory. Edit the CSS there. The ‘_templates’ folder has a lot more to look at:

These are your Smarty templates. As you can see, they are labeled quite well and you should be able to make the changes you need by editing these files. However, there are some things you should know about Smarty templates. For example, they don’t allow you to run any JavaScript unless you wrap the code in {literal} tags:

{literal}
  <script type="text/javascript">
  var smarty = "This code can now be run.";
  alert(smarty);
  </script>
{/literal}

When I first started using Smarty, not knowing the rules of the templates was enough to make me slam my face into my desk. But once you know it, it’s no problem. You can read more about Smarty here.

The main templates you may want to modify are of course the ‘header.tpl’ and ‘footer.tpl’ files but also take a look at the ‘sidebar.tpl’ file as well. This is a great place to add some customizations. I added a link to a twitter account that is set up to automatically post jobs every time one is approved.

Questions? Comments? Let me know in the comments below.