Building a Job Board with Drupal 8

By Neo_83 on 22 Nov 2015 at 17:24 UTC

Since a couple of days I am exploring Drupal 8 out of interest, reading "Beginning Drupal 8" and watching the "Drupal 8 Beginner Class" on YouTube. My background is mainly in front-end development, but I know my ways around in PHP, which is certainly not scaring me. While you hear a lot about the "steep learning curve" (probably non-technical users who have never used a CMS before), I don't find the Drupal back-end overly complex or the terminology strange. In fact, I like the circumstance that most of the real CMS-functionality directly ships with the system. In WordPress you would need to install 2-3 plugins to get similar functionality.

Now, I have experience with other systems (WordPress, ProcessWire and a couple of others) and I would like to build a little test project to better learn the system. If find it too boring to build the ordinary brochure style website (for which Drupal is not ideal I think) so I thought about the following. As a functional "proof of concept" and without any design considerations, I would like to develop a simple job board application where registered companies can publish job posts in different categories:

- Companies can register and then access a closed membership area (which should ideally not be the Drupal back-end itself).
- Within the membership area, companies can create a job post in different categories.
- Job posts will be published once a small payment has been made (ideally via PayPal).
- I am not looking for the magic "module job board solution", so I want to get my hands dirty...

My questions:
- Is this feasible for a first project?
- Should you use Drupal to implement a use-case scenario like this?

As I mentioned, I am more interested in the technical implementation at this point rather than the styling / design to really understand
how Drupal works.

Thanks for your advice.

Comments

- Companies can register and

babipanghang commented 25 November 2015 at 16:35

- Companies can register and then access a closed membership area (which should ideally not be the Drupal back-end itself).

You can do that with roles and permissions.

- Within the membership area, companies can create a job post in different categories.

No problem. You can use taxonomy to create categories and content types for the job posts.

- Job posts will be published once a small payment has been made (ideally via PayPal).

Drupal can do that, but i'm not sure 8 is mature enough. Or, more specifically, if the needed contrib modules are available. For drupal 7, i'd use something like commerce node checkout, but it seems that is not yet available in 8.

- I am not looking for the magic "module job board solution", so I want to get my hands dirty...

Have fun learning!

- Should you use Drupal to implement a use-case scenario like this?

It's definitely a good option. There are even some out of the box distributions like recruiter and drop jobs available.

Did i answer your question on the forums? I love to hear a reply wether or not it worked for you!
Jaap - Acquia certified drupal site builder

Thanks for your response,

Neo_83 commented 26 November 2015 at 22:48

Thanks for your response, Jaap.

Do you know a good book that goes a bit more into the code?

I am currently reading "Beginning Drupal 8" by Todd Tomlinson, which
gives a good overview on the general back-end functionality, but I am missing
a bit the coding site of things.

However, I have the impression that with Drupal you start your projects first from
a site-builder prespective, where you primarily use in-built functions and available
modules. If something cannot be achieved in this way, you start to code it.
Is that correct?

Good

yelvington commented 30 November 2015 at 15:20

However, I have the impression that with Drupal you start your projects first from
a site-builder prespective, where you primarily use in-built functions and available
modules. If something cannot be achieved in this way, you start to code it.
Is that correct?

Absolutely right. Code should be your last resort.

It really hard to customize

michaellwaugh commented 2 December 2015 at 17:47

It really hard to customize drupal if want to create Job Board website. There are many premium theme available to save time and money. you can try that.