Building job sites with Joomla!

Building job sites with Joomla!

Overview of this book

Joomla! is a content management system that helps both novice users and expert developers to create powerful websites. Joomla! has extensions for construcing job sites; web sites for handling employment and careers. It can take hours to build even an elementary job site but imagine yourself building a job site such as Monster, CareerBuilder, a niche job listing such as TechCrunch or your own company job site within few minutes and with minimal development efforts.Building job sites with Joomla! shows you how to create your own job site with Joomla! with the Jobs! Pro extension. From the basic installation and configuration, you will see all the steps required to assemble a working job site in next to no time.This book is a step-by-step tutorial for creating a job site using Joomla!. First you will set up a server environment to install Joomla! 1.5 and Jobs!. Next you will learn how you can use Jobs! configuration settings to control the components of your job site such as adding companies, adding social bookmarking buttons, enabling the users to post their resume online and so on. You will learn to easily manage your site using the Jobs! control panel. This will be followed by using job site template to quickly create a job site and simultaneously test the site you have created. Next you will learn how to speed up the communication between employers and the jobseekers using e-mail templates. You can also entirely control user registration system from Jobs! Pro admin panel. You will also learn to add and manage job types, job categories, and applications to keep your database organized and to keep track of the application status. You will also learn to add a jobseeker or an employer and to manage resume fields. Then you will configure credit systems to charge an amount of money to users according to the specific service provided. By the end of this book you will learn to professionally optimize your Joomla! Job site for search engines and look at list of words that need to be avoided in the URLs.

Building job sites with Joomla!

Credits

About the Author

Acknowledgement

About the Reviewer

Preface

Free Chapter

Installing and Configuring Joomla! 1.5 and Jobs! Pro 1.3.2

Introduction

Prerequisites for installation of Joomla! 1.5 and Jobs!

Installing and configuring Joomla! 1.5

Managing sections, categories, and articles

Managing extensions

Installing and configuring Jobs!

Adding modules

Summary

Control Panel Interface

Introducing Joomla! administrator panel

Introducing Jobs! control panel interface

Summary

Designing a Jobsite Template

Introduction

The basic structure and layout of a template

Background and color schemes

Template reference

Coding

Template parameters

Testing

Summary

Changing Configuration Settings

Introduction

Joomla! 1.5 Global Configuration

Introducing the Site tab

Introducing the System tab

Changing Jobs! Pro 1.3.2 Configurations

Summary

Managing Jobs, Job Types, and Categories

Introduction

Managing job types

Managing job categories

Managing jobs

Summary

Managing Countries and Companies

Introduction

Managing countries

Managing companies

Summary

Managing E-mail, Applications, and Application Status

Introduction

Managing e-mail templates

Managing applications

Managing application status

Summary

User Registration, Credits, Resume Fields, and Education Levels

Introduction

Adding a jobseeker and an employer

Viewing List Job Seekers

Viewing List Employers

Managing the credit system

Managing resume fields and categories

Managing education levels

Summary

Managing Cover Letter, Resume, and Resume Files

Introduction

Managing cover letters

Managing resumes

Managing resume files

Summary

Search Engine Optimization

Introduction

What is SEO?

Making an SEO strategy

Summary

Online Resource

Search Engine Stop Words

Customer Reviews

5 star

4 star

3 star

2 star

1 star

Prerequisites for installation of Joomla! 1.5 and Jobs!

Joomla! is written in PHP and mainly uses MySQL database to store and manipulate information. Before installing Joomla! 1.5 and Jobs! extension, we need a server environment, that includes the following:

Software/Application	Minimum Requirement	Recommended Version	Website
PHP	5	5.2	http//php.net
MySQL	4.1 or above	5	http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/mysql/5.0.html
Apache	1.3 or above		http://httpd.apache.org
IIS	6	7	http://www.iis.net/
mod_mysql
mod_xml
mod_zlib

You must ensure that you have the MySQL, XML, and zlib functionality enabled within your PHP installation. This is controlled within the php.ini file.

Setting up a local server environment

In order to run Joomla! properly, we need a server environment with pre-installed PHP and MySQL. In this case, you can use a virtual server or can choose other hosting options. But if you want to try out Joomla! on your own computer before using a remote server, we can set up a local server environment.

To set up a server environment, we can use XAMPP solution. It comes equipped with Apache HTTP server, PHP, and MySQL. Installing these components individually is quite difficult and needs more time and effort.

To install XAMPP, download the latest version of XAMPP 1.7.x from the Apache friends website: http://www.apachefriends.org/en/xampp.html.

Windows operating system users can install XAMPP for Windows in two different variations—self-extracting RAR archive and ZIP archive.

If you want to use self-extracting RAR archive, first download the .exe file and then follow these steps:

1. Run the installer file, choose a directory, and click on the Install button.
After extracting XAMPP, the setup script setup_xampp.bat will start automatically

2. After the installation is done, click on Start | All Programs | Apache Friends | XAMPP | XAMPP Control Pane.

3. Start Apache and MySQL by clicking on the Start buttons beside each item. If prompted by Windows Firewall, click on the Unblock button.
For more information on installing XAMPP on Windows or troubleshooting, go to the Windows FAQs page: http://www.apachefriends.org/en/faqxampp-windows.html.
If you are using Linux platform, download the compressed .tar.gz file and follow these steps for installation:
4. Go to a Linux shell and log in as the system administrator root:

su

5. Extract the downloaded archive file to /opt:

tar xvfz xampp-linux-1.7.3a.tar.gz -C /opt

XAMPP is now installed in the /opt/lampp directory.

6. To start XAMPP, call the command:

You should now see something similar to the following on your screen:

/opt/lampp/lampp start
Starting XAMPP 1.7.3a... LAMPP: Starting Apache... LAMPP: Starting MySQL... LAMPP started.

For more information on installing XAMPP on Linux or troubleshooting, go to the Linux FAQs page: http://www.apachefriends.org/en/faq-xampp-linux.html.

If you want to use XAMPP in MAC operating system, download the .dmg file and follow these steps:

1. Open the DMG-Image.
2. Drag and drop the XAMPP folder into your Applications folder.
3. XAMPP is now installed in the /Applications/XAMPP directory.
4. To start XAMPP open XAMPP Control and start Apache and MySQL.
5. After installation of XAMPP in a system, to test your installation, type the following URL in the browser: http://localhost/.

You will see the XAMPP start page.

Uploading installation packages and files to server

Now, we need to copy or transfer Joomla! installation package files to server. Before copying the installation package, we must download Joomla_1.5.15-Stable-Full_Package.zip from the webpage http://www.joomla.org/download.html, and then extract and unzip it. You can use WinZip or WinRAR to unzip these files. After unzipping the files, you have to copy files on your server root folder (for Apache, it is htdocs folder). If you are not using the XAMPP or local server environment, you need the File Transfer Protocol (FTP) software to transfer files to your server root folder, such as htdocs or wwwroot. The popular FTP software is FileZilla, which is absolutely free and available for different platforms, including Windows, Linux, and Mac OS. You can get it from the website http://filezilla-project.org/.

Creating database and user

Before installing and configuring Joomla! and Jobs! extension, we also need to create a database and a database user. You can easily add a new database and any user by using phpMyAdmin in XAMPP server environment. To add a database, by using phpMyAdmin, you must follow the following steps:

Type the address http://localhost/phpmyadmin in the web browser. The front page of phpMyAdmin will be displayed.
Type a name for the database you want to create. For example, my_db in the Create new Database field and then click on the Create button to create the database.

To be connected with the database, we need a user account. You can add a user account by clicking on the Privileges tab of phpMyAdmin.

You will see all users' information. Click on Add a new User link of Privileges window. After clicking on the link, a new window will appear. Provide the required information in the Login Information section of this window and then click on the Go button.

We have now completed the preparation stage of installing Joomla!.

Building job sites with Joomla!

Building job sites with Joomla!

Overview of this book

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Current Title:

Building job sites with Joomla!

Prerequisites for installation of Joomla! 1.5 and Jobs!

Setting up a local server environment

Uploading installation packages and files to server

Creating database and user