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Welcome to the joberBase development blog!

1.3 is out with goodies: admin panel

Yeeey, go on and download the latest and bestest jobberBase version, while it’s hot! :)

This is what the changelog says:

  • Added an admin panel (thanks to Lavinia Creivean)
  • Added a survey page: the ideal job (as seen on www.jobber.ro/jobul-ideal/)
  • Improved pagination support (thanks to Mihai Mocanu)
  • Fixed some bugs related to search
  • Translated the sitemap page (forgot to do it, before :p)

The admin panel

Assuming you’ve installed jobberBase on localhost/jobberbase/, the admin defaults to localhost/jobberbase/admin/.
Default username: admin. Default password: admin. You may change these in the ‘admin’ database table.
The panel allows you to activate, deactivate and delete ads. It’s pretty straightforward and nothing fancy… but it does the job well!

“The ideal job” survey

localhost/ideal-job/ shows a survey like this. We did this on jobber.ro to find out what people think is an ideal job, then use the data to show companies what people are interested in.
If you don’t want this feature, just take out the link from _templates/header.tpl and the case ‘ideal-job’ section from index.php. Also job_params, job_requests and job_requests_params database table (they hold the data).

If you want to use this survey, though, but can’t figure out how to change stuff, please let me know and I’ll try to guide you. It’s a simple system I developed, but you may actually get better results using a professional survey-builder :).

That’s (almost) all, folks!

Of course, bug fixes are always there in any new release and this one has them, as well. Mostly small issues in the back-end.

Hope I didn’t miss anything.
Have fun! :)

January 30, 2008 | Filed Under Development | 13 Comments 

Have you found the stats, yet?

Stats? What stats?

Well, I’ve created a page that displays some useful overall information about the site.
Assuming your URL is http://localhost/jobberbase/, the stats can be accessed at http://localhost/jobberbase/stats/.

You probably don’t want other people to see them, so you might want to protect the page somehow. On jobber.ro, I use an extra param (/stats/EXTRA_PARAM/) based on which I perform a basic authentication (if EXTRA_PARAM exists, display page). :p

What stats are available?

  • A list of the latest job applications + total no. of apps + maximum apps per day, in the past 30 days + average apps per day, in the past 30 days.
  • List of performed searches on the site + total no. of searches + max searches per day in the past 30 days + avg apps per day in the past 30 days.

On jobber.ro we also track the site widgets, like this:
Whenever someone clicks on a job ad she sees on a 3rd party site (that displays the jobber site widget), we save the referrer. This way, we know EXACTLY how many people actually used the site widget and how popular it is on their sites :).

Metrics is always good!
Enjoy! :)

January 29, 2008 | Filed Under Knowledge Base | 1 Comment 

How to implement reCAPTCHA

If you haven’t been spammed by bots, yet, you probably will soon be :D.
On jobber.ro, we use reCAPTCHA to prevent spam. It’s a hosted captcha provider and much more!

Step 1. Create an account with reCAPTCHA

Go ahead and create an account, download the PHP API (and copy recaptchalib.php in the _includes/ directory, and sign up for an API key.

Step 2. Add reCAPTCHA when posting an ad

config.php
Define 2 constants, one for public and one for the private API key:

define('CAPTCHA_PUBLIC_KEY', '12345_YOUR_PUBLIC_KEY');
define('CAPTCHA_PRIVATE_KEY', '12345_YOUR_PRIVATE_KEY');

Also add the following line (find the other require_once lines), which includes the recaptcha library:

require_once '_includes/recaptchalib.php';

_templates/publish-write.tpl
Right above the submit button’s fieldset, insert the following code:

<h2 class="publish_section">Anti-spam</h2>
<fieldset>
  {literal}
    <script type="text/javascript">
      var RecaptchaOptions = {
        theme : 'white',
        tabindex : 9
      };
    </script>
  {/literal}
  {$the_captcha} <span class="validation-error">{if $errors.captcha}
  <img src="{$BASE_URL}img/icon-delete.png" alt="" />{/if}</span>
</fieldset>

page-write.php
On line 2, we generate the html code that displays the captcha in the template:

$smarty->assign('the_captcha', recaptcha_get_html(CAPTCHA_PUBLIC_KEY));

Next, we perform a simple validation when posting the ad. Find the following line:

if ($_POST['action'] && $_POST['action'] == 'publish')

A couple of lines below it, after you initialize the $errors array, add this code:

$resp = recaptcha_check_answer(CAPTCHA_PRIVATE_KEY,
$_SERVER["REMOTE_ADDR"], $_POST["recaptcha_challenge_field"],
$_POST["recaptcha_response_field"]);

if (!$resp->is_valid)
{
  $errors['captcha'] = 'Incorrect code';
}

Then, we need to add the captcha validation in another section of page-write.php, the one that handles the ad edit. Find the following line and add the same code as above:

else if ($_POST['action'] && $_POST['action'] == 'edit'

That should be it :).
Enjoy!

January 23, 2008 | Filed Under How-to | 7 Comments 

Digg jobberBase

If you like jobberBase, you can now also digg the story! :)

January 23, 2008 | Filed Under Community | 1 Comment 

Beware of jobberBase clone!

I just found this link on digg: osjobber.com.
It seems they have taken jobberBase, replaced most (not even all!) of the references to jobber/jobberBase/myself and launched it as osjobber.

How pathetic is that!?

January 22, 2008 | Filed Under Misc | 19 Comments 

Fixing the search

Hey, guys,
If you’ve tested jobberBase, you’ve probably found out by now that there are some issues with the search functionality.

If anyone has fixed some of the problems and wishes to contribute to the project, you are most welcome and will receive eternal gratitude and recognition :).

Enjoy!

January 22, 2008 | Filed Under Development | 5 Comments 

2.000 downloads

Wow, it’s great to see that there’ve been 2.000 downloads of jobberBase!

If you have any feedback, please don’t hesitate to bring it on :).

January 17, 2008 | Filed Under Status | 5 Comments 

Version 1.2 out: pagination support!

Hey all, I’ve just released a new version which includes pagination support for job categories. I had this planned for a while, now, but thanks to Adrian Rusu-Scurtu’s help, I was able to finally implement it :).

Go out and download jobberBase 1.2 now.

December 11, 2007 | Filed Under Development | 11 Comments 

Small update available

I want to thank everybody that reported bugs, suggested features and provided fixes on the community forum!

There are still a lot of stuff to be improved, but I decided to release version 1.1, a bug-fix/clean-up version, mostly.

Here’s the changelog:

  • Modified the directory structure and moved the entire application into /app subdirectory.
  • Added an alternate .htaccess that seems to work better on some big hosting companies.
  • Cleaned up config.php of unnecessarry defines.
  • Fixed a number of bugs reported on www.jobberbase.com/community/ (thanks to everyone!)

Hope you enjoy jobberBase and hope you put it to good use!

Download latest version

November 28, 2007 | Filed Under Development | 2 Comments 

Your contribution matters

As of today, I’ve added a PayPal Donate button on this blog’s sidebar.

I’m very happy that jobberBase has started to help people with their projects. If you’re successfully using jobberBase, would you consider making a small donation?

November 19, 2007 | Filed Under Misc | 3 Comments 

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