Category Archives: Projects

Introducing: Automatic Updater for WordPress

Automatic Updater, WordPress, ,

Are you sick of having to wait several seconds for your WordPress site to update? Tired of your plugins not being updated as soon as an update is available? Well, do I have the solution for you! Automatic Updater for WordPress is a light-weight plugin that downloads and installs updates as soon as they become available – keeping your WordPress site up-to-date, secure, and minty fresh!

With the hyperbole out of the way, I do have a few things to note:

  • This plugin really does update your site, without your supervision, at any time, day or night. This is awesome for WordPress Core, but may suck if a bad version of a plugin is released – at the very least, the plugin may be disabled, at worst, your site may be taken offline. Exercise appropriate caution.
  • No backups are taken. You really should be using a good backup system, whether it be one of the multitude of backup plugins, or a backup service like VaultPress.
  • If your site breaks because of this, I’m really sorry. I’d appreciate it if you took your anger and channelled it into writing up a thorough bug report, instead of plotting my demise.

Thanks, and have fun!

PonyEdit: It’s really fast

PonyEdit, ,

Over the past few months, a friend and I have been hard at work on a new breed of text editor that we call PonyEdit. If you’ve ever found yourself cursing over the lag of working on remote cloud servers, this is the editor for you.

It’s not just another SFTP editor…

Reading and writing files over SFTP is nothing new; dozens of text editors can do it. But it’s always slow, clunky and feels like the feature was bolted on as an afterthought. You’ll find yourself using separate shortcuts to open files locally vs remotely, and dealing with sometimes painful save times with every edit, no matter how minor.

PonyEdit gets rid of this terribly slow method of working by connecting over SSH, and using edit streaming to push changes to the server in the background as-you-type.

Head on over to PonyEdit.com to download a free trial, and let me know what you think! Oh, and…

Stand by to have your mind blown.

Job Manager HOWTO: Customizing the Job List

Job Manager, Projects, WordPress Plugins,

A common problem I hear people having with Job Manager is that they don’t know how to customize how the Job List looks. In this post, I’ll try to break down how to write your own Job List templates, so you can get it looking pretty.

First of all, open your wp-admin, and go to Job Manger->Settings->Display Settings. Scr0ll down to the box called Job Templates. Like many other plugins allow in Posts and Pages, Job Manager templates use shortcodes. All of the shortcodes are described in this text box, but I’ll only be using a handful of them here to demonstrate.

The default template shows an expanded view of each job, but many sites only want a summary table, so people can click through to the job. Here’s an example of that:

To start with, decide which fields you want to show in the table. From the default fields, you might decide to use the Job Title, the Location, and the Start Date. On a default installation of Job Manager, these have the shortcodes [job_title], [job_field4] and [job_field2], respectively.

Now we can start writing our template. Start with the table header:

Notice that we’ve used the job_fieldi_label shortcodes. These will be replaced by the Field Labels you can define in Job Form Settings.
Next up, we need to define the Job Loop. [job_loop] is a special tag, because it has a start tag ([job_loop]) and an end tag ([/job_loop]). Everything between those tags will be repeated for every job being displayed, which means we only have to write the HTML for one table row, like so:
[job_loop]
    

[/job_loop]

Notice that we’ve also used the [job_link] tag, which will make the Job Title link to the full Job description.
Finally, we just need to close the table.

    

        Title
        [job_field4_label]
        [job_field2_label]
    



        [job_link][job_title][/job_link]
        [job_field4]
        [job_field2]
    


Naturally, you might choose to include extra things in your template, this is a very cut-down example. But hopefully it should give you some ideas for you how can expand the templating system to create wonderful new layouts!
  
 
 
 Job Manager Highlight: Thinc Projects
 Job Manager, Projects, WordPress Plugins, 
 
Thinc Projects just launched their new careers site, with the help of the people at Zojo. They were after a job board plugin, and after evaluating other options, came to the conclusion that Job Manager was the obvious choice.
 
I found Job Manager easy to work with from day one, I appreciated the way it works straight out-of-the-box and I knew my client would understand it straight away upon handover. This allowed me to set up my fields and pages as required with full knowledge that everything was working and all I had to do was apply my design.
Customizing the form layout to the final design was easy. Using CSS, I was able to style and add classes to my liking by adding code into the page templates as I required them. From a developers view point I was able to customise the layout and fields according to my heart’s content (or my clients’ I should say).
— David Gross, Zojo
They were also after particular information from applicants, so the ability to customise the application form as invaluable. And just because I like to let the users speak for themselves, here’s a little more of what David had to say:
While evaluating other options, nothing came close in terms of freedom of options, customisation and support.
So there you have it – download Job Manager, you can easily create a job board for your company!
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!
  
 
 
 Job Manager 0.7 Released
 Job Manager, Projects, WordPress Plugins, 
 
AKA: The “No Unifying Theme” release.
Along those lines, there are a bunch of varied new features!
  • Interview Scheduling – Easily keep track of who you’re interviewing and when, with interview ratings and internal comments
  • Comments – Keep internal comments on interviews and applications, so you’re easily able to aggregate and recall thoughts on each applicant
  • WordPress.com Support – If you’re a WordPress.com VIP customer, and you want to bring your hiring process back in house, drop me a line, I’d be happy to discuss any features you need, or assist you setting it up.
  • Application Form Templating – If you’d like to customise the look of your application form, you can. Build a mad-libs style form! (The potential benefits of which are briefly discussed here.)
  • Jobs Per Page – If you’re showing lots of jobs, you might want to split them up into multiple pages.
As always, the Changelog has all the juicy details!
The big feature in the next version will be the ability to create a public job site for (optionally) charging people to post jobs on your site. If you have ideas or suggestions for how you’d like to see this work, check out the Roadmap and leave comments on the appropriate issue.
Version 0.8 will have a slightly longer development cycle than previous versions – I expect the stable release to be out in early July. I’m travelling for much of the next 6 weeks, so rather than making promises I can’t keep, I’ll push feature development for 0.8 until June. I’ll still be fixing any bugs that crop up in 0.7, of course.
There are several more translations in progress, I’ll be releasing them as they’re completed, throughout the 0.7 lifecycle. On a related note, the German translation needs someone to keep it up to date – if you speak German and have some time to translate strings, please contact me!
For now, go and upgrade to version 0.7, and let me know what you think!
  
 
 
 Job Manager Highlight: BlueTree Search
 Job Manager, Projects, WordPress Plugins, 
 
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!
  
 
 
 Job Manager 0.6 Released
 Job Manager, Projects, WordPress Plugins, 
 
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
 Job Manager, Projects, WordPress Plugins, 
 
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
 Job Manager, Projects, WordPress Plugins, 
 
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
 Job Manager, Projects, WordPress Plugins, 
 
*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! :)