Job Manager Highlight: BlueTree Search
BlueTree Search recently re-launched their site with the help of Stripe Creative, switching from plain HTML to WordPress as a CMS. Along the way, they decided to bring their job listing in-house.
Initially, this client asked us to add a job posting section to the web site we developed for them a few years ago. Our awesome programmer dude (Scotty at randomproductions.net) suggested that for the same cost of adding a custom-written application, we could re-create the site in WordPress and find a customizable job posting plug-in. This allowed us to offer the client some serious added value (easier updates and adding new functionality through plug-ins) at no additional cost. The transfer to WordPress was transparent to the end users — we kept the site’s original design — and adding/customizing Job Manager was a breeze.
— Brian Robboy, Stripe Creative
With a little bit of editing of the Individual Job Template, they were able to easily highlight pertinent information, without distracting from the content of the listed job.
And a final bonus comment from Brian:
I love working with people like you who actually CARE about the applications they’re writing…we’d never get this level of dedication, customer service and communication with a commercial product.
Are you doing creative things with Job Manager? Have some time to tell me how and why you’re using it? Drop me a line, you could be the next Job Manager Highlight!
Stats for WordPress plugins and themes hosted on wordpress.org
I am a stats addict. For all of the sites I work on, there’s a link in my Google Analytics account to show me the statistics for that site.
Unfortunately, there’s one site missing from the chain: wordpress.org. Job Manager is hosted there, but I cannot see the visitor statistics. Google Code allows you to track statistics for your project hosted there, so I think wordpress.org hosting should be able to do the same, for plugins and themes hosted there.
To that end, I have submitted a shiny new feature request. If you like this idea, go, comment, and vote for it!
Job Manager 0.6 Released
AKA: The “so many features, so little time” release.
Here are some of the major features that have been added:
- Custom Job Fields. Like the Application Form, you can now add custom fields to Jobs, so you can display the information that is pertinent to your organisation.
- Job and Job List Templates. You can now completely customise the HTML that is produced for lists of jobs, and individual jobs. (If you build a cool template that you’d like to share, feel free to send it through – I’d like to build a database where people can easily browse through and choose the look-and-feel that they’re after for their job listing.)
- Widgets. No more maintaining text widgets with links to your job categories, or lists of latest jobs.
- Highlighted Jobs. You can now highlight important jobs, and stick them to the top of any job list they appear in.
- CAPTCHA support, thanks to the excellent SI CAPTCHA plugin.
There are many more, check the Changelog for the complete list!
The development cycle for this version has been a little bumpy. Mid-way through, I decided to add Job Fields and Templates, the lack of which had been bugging me, but in order to meet the arbitrary deadline of “mid-February” for the 0.6 release (which I ended up only meeting with the first beta), I had to cut a few of the other features I had planned. That said, I think the process is getting smoother, and I’m certainly getting a lot of support from the WordPress community: we now have two complete translations (Dutch and French), more on the way, and a comprehensive user manual in the works!
So, where to next?
First up, I like having a “small features” release. It gives me a chance to attend to the tweaking that can be overlooked when implementing major features, so I’ve schedule version 0.8 as being the next small features release. I’ve already have a few listed on the Roadmap, but I’m always interested in adding more!
Speaking of the Roadmap, I’m going to have to revise the Due dates that I have listed. These dates were set in November/December last year, and it seems I made them a bit too aggressive – not allowing for beta releases, longer-than-expected development time, et cetera. I’ll be looking at them over the next couple of weeks, if you have any thoughts on it, please leave a comment below.
The next major feature I’m going to be working on is allowing anyone to post jobs. If you have any comments on how you’d like this to work, please post them in this issue.
Finally, do you have any ideas for where you’d like to see Job Manager go? Some of my best feature suggestions have come from the community – you’re the people who are using it in every day life, so I want to know how I can make your life easier. Send me your suggestions through the issue tracker.
Job Manager 0.5 Released
AKA: “The Mother of All Changelogs” release. Go on, look at it. It’s huge.
This has been the first time I’ve made beta releases on the wp.org system, and I think it’s been quite successful. I’ve had some good feedback over the past few days, and fixed several bugs, without affecting user’s production systems. Naturally, I welcome any comments on how you felt it went.
The big changes are:
- You can now allow or require users to register before they can submit an application. This will be the basis for a pile of new features coming up over the next few months.
- You could always send email to applicants – now these emails are stored, and along with records of who they were sent to.
- Application ratings – it’s now easy to keep track of who your star applicants are. You can also filter your list of applications based on their rating, for an easy list of who you need to call back.
- A lot of people were asking how to find the links to the categories, so I’ve added links to each category on the Settings page. I’ll be adding more methods to find your way to the categories in later versions.
I’ve set up GlotPress to handle my translations, if you’d like to have Job Manager in your language, please contact me, so I can create an account for you. If you’re interested, I only change or add strings in feature releases (0.3, 0.4, 0.5, etc). I don’t make any changes or additions in bug fix releases (0.4.1, 0.4.2, 0.4.3, etc).
The next feature release, version 0.6, will include lots of small features that people have requested. If there’s a small change you’d like to see in Job Manager, check out the Roadmap and see if it’s there. If not, submit a feature request!
Job Manager 0.4.0 Released
AKA: The “this blog is turning into a Job Manager announcement list” release.
This release involves a pile of under-the-hood changes:
- Re-write of the entire data storage routines to use default WordPress tables – no more creation of custom tables!
- Because of the above, Job Manager now requires WordPress 2.9. That’s cool, because you’ve all upgraded already. Right?
- Sanity checking, security hardening and bug fixes!
As usual, the Changelog has the juicy gossip.
Go and download it now! What are you waiting for?
Job Manager 0.3.0 Released
*sniffles* It’s growing up so quickly!
This new release sees a few new features:
- Framework for supporting additional functionality through plugins
- Support for Sitemaps, through Google XML Sitemaps
- POT file added, for translations
On top of that, a pile of bug fixes. The Changelog has all the details.
As always, the Job Manager home page remains the same. If you want to dive right into the action, download it here!
With the addition of the plugin functionality, I’d certainly be interested to hear from other plugin authors who would like to work together.
If you’re bilingual with an urgent need to translate, I’d definitely love to hear from you, too! 
Job Manager is Released!
A plugin for WordPress I’ve been working on for the past month or so, I wanted to create a powerful job listing and application management system for WordPress. So, here it is! If you’re looking for a complete job/application system, I’d encourage you to download it and have a look!
You can read more about it on the plugin homepage, or download it from the WordPress plugin directory! If you happen to run into any bugs, please report them in my bug tracker.
Italy Week 1 & 2: Sanremo
Well, I’m about 2 months behind writing about my time in Europe, so I probably should try and catch up. Here’s episode 1 of a sporadicly updated N part series.
After a long, but relatively uneventful journey of 17,000 kilometers from Melbourne, we finally arrived in Sanremo. If you’re ever in the area, I highly recommend the train ride from Genova to Sanremo, it’s an hour and a half of picturesque seaside towns and rocky shores. If you just want to get to Sanremo quickly after 30-something hours of travel, remember to fly into Nice. A 1 hour train ride from Nice versus a 4+ hours from Milano is probably going to be a little more comfortable. We found our hotel easily, despite claims on some websites that it was impossible to find (the directions we were given were quite accurate). If you’re after somewhere clean, central and relatively inexpensive to stay, I can definitely recommend the Pollon Inn, which as we later discovered, is one of the handful of hotels in Sanremo with air-conditioning as well.
Following my first shower in a day-and-a-half, we decided to explore the town a little. Sanremo is a very tourist-friendly town, being a popular destination for summer holidays. If you don’t mind walking uphill for a bit, there is an excellent garden above the old town, with very good views over the city.
In somewhat related news, I think I’ll be happy if I never see the stretch of track between Genova and Milano again. We did a day trip to Milano to check out work/apartment options, combined with travel for ACLE (see upcoming posts), I’ve seen that hour of flat countryside more times than I care to remember.
As luck would have it, Liam was staying in Nice at the same time we were in Sanremo, this sounded like an excellent excuse to visit France for lunch (and dinner, as it turned out). Nice is a very pretty town, much of it apparently being rebuilt over the past few years to make it more tourist friendly. In retrospect, staying in Nice for the week prior to ACLE training would have been a good idea. Sadly, due to our desire to stay longer than 3 months, a visa is required, which means navigating the bureaucracy of the Italian visa and residency system. This is a story deserving of its own post, but let me say this much: if it seems as if you’re getting through it far too easily, it’s because you are. At some point, it will all go horribly, horribly wrong.
In happier news, the ACLE training camp was an excellent experience. If you’re looking for a way to spend your mid-year break, ACLE is a very good option. Arriving for the start of training involves making your way to Sanremo train station, where you’ll be met by the ACLE greeting party of office folk and returning tutors. We were changed to a different hotel, Hotel Centro. Unfortunately, I cannot recommend this one. It was in an excellent location, but it had two problems that the Pollon Inn had it beat on: air-conditioning, and beds long enough for me to fit into. It seems that Gary-sized beds are a rare commodity in Italy.
After dumping our stuff at the new hotel, it was time for a get-to-know-you aperitivo at the Sax Bar. For those not familiar with the Italian tradition of aperitivo, it basically amounts to pre-dinner drinks, with small savory snacks to go with it. Bars will frequently serve the snacks for free, though it is considered good manners to continue buying drinks while you’re there.
As for the actual training itself, I don’t have a lot to say about it. I found it to be a very thorough introduction to teaching English to small children, covering various methods for keeping them interested, and for communicating the concepts. We also got to visit some of the restaurants throughout Sanremo, which was a good introduction to Italian culture, and an excellent opportunity to hang out with fellow tutors.
Finally, it was time to move onto our first camps, which for us was in Como. I’ll be writing about that one in my next update-with-no-fixed-schedule.
More photos are in my Nice album and my Sanremo album.
Leaving MySQL (Not Really)
I’ve been a bit slack about writing my MySQL thoughts of late. This would be caused by the fact that, as I write this, I’m now one week into a 12 month leave of absence from MySQL.
Having given it much careful consideration, I’ve decided that the wisest way to survive the current economic problems is by blowing my savings on a year long holiday in Italy. Wait, did I say holiday? Not really. I’m still a Sun employee, and I’m still going to be active in the MySQL community. My dear support customers just won’t be seeing me around for a while.
I’m looking forward to having time to write more extensively about some of the cool things we’re doing, and what’s going on in the community at large. If there’s anything you’d like to hear about (either expanding on my previous posts, or a completely new topic), please let me know.
Another thing I’d like to do, if there are any interested parties, is to see how companies are using MySQL in their part of the world. So, if you don’t mind showing off what you’re doing and having me write a little bit about it, feel free to drop me a line. All of my current contact details can be found on my contact page. I’m going to be primarily based in Milan, but I’ll be looking to travel around the rest of Europe at some point, so I’d be more than happy to stop by and see you if the opportunity arises.
MySQL and Geospatial Data
MySQL has had basic support for Geospatial Data since 4.1, but has lacked some of the features of the OpenGIS specifications since then. The good news is, this is rapidly changing. Our own Holyfoot has been hammering away at WorkLog #1327, to provide precise functions for our GIS support.
Even better, it’s fast. How fast? Well, the good people at Oki Labs, apart from having implemented several new GIS functions for MySQL, have done some benchmarking, and it’s looking good. If you’ll excuse the cliched comparison to Postgres, here are the response times (seconds) of MySQL GIS vs. PostGIS in Oki’s test:
| Connections | PostGIS | MySQL |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1.817 | 0.220 |
| 100 | 10.517 | 0.557 |
Source: http://www.osgeo.jp/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2008/11/foss4g2008_okumura.pdf
If you’re interested in checking it out, the source tree (regularly merged with MySQL 5.1) is available here. Have a look at Giuseppe’s guide to running a Bazaar export in MySQL Sandbox.
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Gary Pendergast, noun: Gamer, developer, MySQL, WordPress, web and music geek. Currently taking a leave of absence from life as a MySQL Support Engineer for Oracle to tour around Europe. Can be observed in his natural habit at pento.net, or usually in Bologna, Italy.
