I am still trying to figure out how to remove the Latest News block from the employers interface and to change the layout to a two column page layout. The first thing I focused on was trying to find some setting in Drupal that could deal with this issue. I looked at permissions, roles, access rules, workflow, site configuration, blocks, job posting setting and a bunch of other dead ends, so no luck there.
Read More »
Carlos Acosta
Media Studies Process Journal
Our group determined that the ‘create a job form’ had to be modified. We wanted the wording used in the form to be more friendly and less technical (it suffered from Drupal speak). In addition, it was important to remove the application processing section as Doug did not want to have that feature in the system.
In order to do both changes I had to modify the PHP code for the job_posting module. I found the template file at /drupal/sites/all/modules/job_posting/ the file that I had to modify was job_posting.module. I found what I was after in the ‘Implementation of hook_form()’ section.
Read More »
Preliminary research pointed me in the direction of a Drupal module called workflow. The Drupal forums talked about workflows and how they can be used to screen content. I noticed that this module was installed on the MS site but not activated, so I activated it and began exploring this possibility.
As it turns out the solution isn’t through the workflow module, although it may be possible to use this module to give us the functionality we require. It is more complex to implement and
Read More »
One of the tasks we identified as a group was that employers required a customized interface tailored for adding job posts. This interface would be drastically simplified in order to avoid confusion. Our idea was that after the employer logs in she/he is presented with a two column page layout with a very simple menu on the left-hand side. A menu that displayed only four tasks:
Read More »
Configuring
After downloading and installing the Job Posting module (with a little help from Chris), we were ready to start learning and using the module in order to evaluate it for our use. The ‘Job Posting’ menu item is the first and most obvious thing that appears (in the Admin Menu — of the MS site) after installing Job Posting. It appears in two locations:
Read More »
Joobsbox is an open source job forum Web application that our team is evaluating in order to determine its suitability for the Media Studies job forum project. I downloaded joobsbox and attempted to install it locally on my development server, however after repeated attempts could not get it working.
Read More »
It’s a little too early to recommend a definitive course of action, but I’m kind leaning towards the Drupal add on solution. I think it offers the most potential considering the time constraints that we are under.
I’m thinking we should dismiss any proprietary solutions as the ones I’ve located don’t seem to be in-line with our objectives. However I think that it’s worth test driving joobsbox (an open source solution), I think it would be worth installing this on our development server.
Read More »
Build Our Own Web Application
We could build our own Web application from scratch. We would have to build our own database, normalize it, then create all the scripts that would interface with it. Most of the work would involve designing a CMS (or back-end) component that would include a user manager, job posting manager, student and employers manager. In parallel to this we would have to build the public or front-end from scratch, also a significant amount of work. The main advantage of this approach is that it could look like anything we imagine it to be, including having the same (or a similar) interface as the new MS site. This offers the most flexibility but also will involve the most work and the steepest learning curve.
Read More »
Open Source / Proprietary Job Forums
There are a number of open source and proprietary solutions out there. The following are the ones we researched in order of perceived suitability to the job forum project:
Open Source Solutions
http://www.joobsbox.com/ – Seems like a viable solution, however more research is required. May be worth downloading in order to evaluate further. Offers the following features:
- Plugins and Themes are available (which means we can create our own theme)
- Categorized jobs
- Search Engine
- Approve, edit and delete job postings
- Has the ability to set duration of job postings
- RSS feed capable
- Seamless integration into existing site (I`ll believe it when I see it)
Drupal Module Solutions
As a result from the job forum concept map that our team assembled it was identified that there needs to be three levels of access to the job forum in order to effectively manage the site. Administrative access, employer access, and student access. Theoretically, this is already built into Drupal. In other words, it may be possible to handle this functionality using the existing MS site. Further research will have to be conducted in order to verify this possibility.
Read More »