The latest version of JobRoller is now available. This release includes several bug fixes, new features, and an important Indeed integration change. Please read this entire post before performing the upgrade as not everyone may wish to do so.
What’s New?
The most notable changes in 1.5 have to do with the Indeed integration and a new resume (CV) subscription monetization feature. To see the full list of fixes and changes in this release, read the 1.5 release notes on our docs site.
How Do I Upgrade?
If you haven’t made any changes to the theme files then the easiest method is to just do a complete upgrade (download the full 1.5 version from your account dashboard). If you’ve made modifications to the core theme files, then we recommend installing the patch version instead. Then follow the “Installing a Patch” guide.
Indeed Changes
(Don’t use the Indeed feature? You can skip this section.)
As you know, we’ve built JobRoller to pull in job listings from Indeed.com. As powerful as the Indeed integration is, their API limits the job description to only 1-2 sentences. This means jobs pulled into JobRoller are pretty bare bones and don’t provide much value. Understandably, that doesn’t work well for most of our customers so we decided to make a change.
We’ve been working directly with the Indeed team to figure out the best solution and unfortunately, they were not able to fulfill our request and increase the job description length. With that news, we felt it was best to rework how the integration was done.
What Has Changed?
Indeed jobs are no longer being pulled directly into the JobRoller database. Instead, they are dynamically displayed within your existing listings and within search results. This allows you to still monetize your site with Indeed listings and keep your JobRoller database filled with only user-submitted jobs. Existing Indeed jobs in your JobRoller database will not be affected.
We felt it was important to make these changes in 1.5 without sacrificing Indeed functionality. This change was also required by the Indeed team to better align us with their API terms of use.
What Are My Options?
If you wish to continue pulling Indeed jobs into the JobRoller database, you should not upgrade to 1.5. Honestly, we feel there is no reason to hold back since the Indeed jobs are still being displayed — just not stored in the database.
Resume Subscriptions & Radius Search
With 1.5, we’ve introduced a new way to monetize your site. There’s now an option to charge a subscription fee for browsing your resume database. This was one of the most requested features so we felt it was important to add in this release.
You can also now search the resume database with the same powerful radius search used on the job listings. The radius distance drop-down allows you to refine your search based on location. In order for this to work, a new location field has been added to the resume submission process. This captures the longitude and latitude coordinates so the radius search works correctly.
Security Sweep
As with all of our themes, we’ve recently performed a complete security check to tighten down any loose ends. Our very own Cristi Burca (also a WordPress core contributor) headed up the sweep so we’re confident everything is even more secure.
We take your security very seriously – especially after the recent TimThumb security issue a few months back. To make it easier for you and to help speed up the amount of time it takes us to learn about any sort of security issue, we’ve gone ahead and setup a new email address specifically for security-related issues.
So, if you come across what you think might be a threat, please email us ASAP at security [at] appthemes.com. We’ll do our best to address the issue and roll out a fix as quickly as possible.
Questions?
Anything related to support should be posted in the support forum where our dedicated support team can assist you.
Is your Email Address Correct?
An email was sent out on Friday to all JobRoller customers announcing 1.5. Several customers mentioned that they did not receive it. Please make sure your email address is current and also add newsletter [at] appthemes.com to your whitelist (add it to your email system’s address book). This will help ensure our emails make it into your inbox.