Job Board Site Ideas / Suggestions

[ReeceSayer]

Hi,

 

I've been out of touch with the PHP stuff for nearly 18 months now but as i've started my final year at university i wanted to do a worthwhile project that could showcase my skills and i'm looking for your thoughts (as professionals) on the viability of my initial ideas.

 

I want to create a Job board (for Graduate jobs) using PHP, MYSQL, JQuery etc. essentially whatever I can to get the job done but would like to hear suggestions about the following:

 

[*] Using sessions to have separate logins and back ends for Candidates & Recruiters

[*] Automatic emails at set intervals for both candidates and recruiters - Cron Jobs?

[*] Need ideas on database tables (I saw a post further down which i'll take a look at)

[*] Click tracking etc. Is there a way i can create something to handle this? And how accurate would it be?

[*] I would need some sort of reporting, should i use open source software or create something myself

[*] Creating a Search function - Is this easy? Or should i just use the google one

[*] Would this kind of site be ok hosted? Or would it suffer problems with query speed etc?

 

Sorry for all of the questions, i have a lot more but don't want to overload the page.

 

I'm not asking for people to link to me everything i'm sure google would be able to help me out there but i just want to know if there are specific things i should look into etc or if this type of project is too much for me to handle.

 

I look forward to hearing your feedback.

 

Also if there is a more appropriate forum (I didn't see one), Could a mod move the thread?

 

Cheers,

 

Reece

[Adam]

1) This is pretty standard.

 

2) Yup, cron jobs would be your best bet assuming you go for a Linux server (Windows has an equivalent). Not sure what automated material you could send recruiters, but candidates you could send them a weekly newsletter of jobs they've said they're interested in. I would say though, when I was last looking for a job, I registered on a few sites and they just spammed me with jobs located all over the country.

 

3) Quite a broad subject really. I would write down all the requirements of the data you would need, and go from there really. If you have a more specific question on this I would post it separately, as we can't list every table you would need at this stage.

 

4) Google Analytics is free and widely used, but there's some uncertainty in it's accuracy. If you just want a rough indication of traffic then it will do the job, but if you want 100% accurate you may be better using a tool like AWStats, which parses your server access logs for it's data.

 

5) The reporting logic would probably fall on yourself to implement, but the visual side of it there's plenty of free plug-ins you can use to generate graphs and charts and make it all look pretty. Then again that depends what you mean by reporting?

 

6) How long's a piece of string? You can make a search engine as basic or as complex as you like. You may get the project off the ground quicker just going with Google's site search, then implementing your own over time. Then again you might not be able to search a specific category for example.

 

7) Shared hosting would be fine at first (possibly depending on what server-side software you need), but if/as traffic increases you would need to move it to a dedicated server.

[ReeceSayer]

Adam,

 

Really do appreciate your response so thanks.

 

You've answered pretty much everything.

 

Just one thing though. When i mention click tracking i didn't mean as such tracking my traffic. I meant, would it be possible to see how many times people viewed a particular job / clicked a particular link.

 

As you said about being spammed, i know this is an issue for candidates, I currently work for a job board which is why i wanted to do this project in particular, Hopefully i'll be able to code something where if there aren't a certain number of jobs (say 5 for example) in a candidates chosen location / category, then the email won't get sent to that candidate.

 

I'm not actually planning on the site taking off / being used for a lot i just wanted to showcase something with a real life application, A little more complex than an e-commerce site, I think anyway.

 

When I get cracking i'll post some links up to see what people think and so i can get feedback on the usability of the site.

 

Thanks again,

 

Reece

 

[Philip]

Just one thing though. When i mention click tracking i didn't mean as such tracking my traffic. I meant, would it be possible to see how many times people viewed a particular job / clicked a particular link.

Google Analytics will still suffice for this If you really wanted to do it on your own though, you could do another table (or column) for views and just increment (update query) on each page view.