Build a WordPress job board with employer portals on Reign

A candidate searches the job archive, opens a single job page and applies. Those pages are styled by the Reign WP Job Manager Addon, so the board reads as part of your community and not as a separate tool. WP Job Manager still runs the listings and the applications.

An employer posts a job and manages it from the employer dashboard. If you use WP Job Manager add-ons such as Applications, Resume Manager or paid listings, they keep working as before, because the addon changes styling only.

BuddyNext supplies the community layer: profiles, a feed, spaces and notifications. It turns the board into a place employers and candidates can belong to, which matters between job searches. Messages work through WPMediaVerse.

Copy the live site to staging and install the addon there. Open the job archive, filters, a single job, the apply form and the employer submission form. Compare each with the theme and look for stock styling.

If you have WP Job Manager add-ons, check each of their screens too. Some have their own templates, and it is worth knowing which look right and which need attention.

Check on a phone, and check a logged-out visit. The archive is the front door for most candidates.

The community is the first addition: BuddyNext for profiles and a feed, and Jetonomy for a career advice space where accepted answers stay findable. Eventonomy suits hiring days and webinars with RSVPs. MediaVerse lets employers show their workplace in photos and video.

WB Gamification adds points and badges earned from real activity, free of charge.

If you ever decide to move to WP Career Board, the WP Career Board build guide describes what it covers. The plugins page lists everything else.

This build suits a board with listings and employers already on WP Job Manager. Migrating off a working board buys you little and risks listings, so styling is the lower-risk step.

If you are starting a board from nothing, the WP Career Board build guide starts free with listings, employer dashboards, company profiles and applications. If you list businesses and places, see the directory build. If you place freelancers, see the services marketplace build. The JobMate Theme kit packages the theme and add-on.

Approve new listings, remove anything that breaks your posting policy and reply to employers whose listings are unclear. A good listing brings better applicants, and employers often welcome the advice.

Weekly, post to the feed about a featured employer or a useful article, and answer a few questions in the advice space yourself. After a while members answer each other.

WP Job Manager and its add-ons keep their own licences from their authors. Reign is a flat theme licence with no per-member fee and no share of your sales. See the pricing page for add-on and kit options.

The first is changing too much at once. A board that already has traffic and employers has something worth protecting. Restyle first, check that nothing broke, and add the community in a separate step. If something goes wrong you will know which change caused it.

The second is ignoring the add-ons you already use. If you run Applications, Resume Manager or paid listings, each has its own pages and emails, and they may not all look right after a restyle. List the add-ons you run and open every screen each one adds, on staging, before you go live. Fix the ones that look stock before employers see them.

The third is adding a community with no plan for it. A feed that nobody posts in makes the board look neglected. Before you switch on BuddyNext, decide who will post, what they will post and how often. A weekly featured employer and a weekly question to candidates is enough to start. If you cannot commit to that, add the community later and spend the time on the listings instead.