Getting started

Requirements

• WordPress 6.6 or later
• PHP 8.1 or later
• Any theme. Boardwise is built from blocks and works with block themes and classic themes.

Install Boardwise

1. In WordPress, go to Plugins → Add New and search for "Boardwise".
2. Click Install Now, then Activate.

A Jobs menu appears in the dashboard.

Create the pages

After activating, you'll see a "Finish setting up your job board" notice. Click Create pages. Boardwise creates these pages and links them in its settings:

• Post a Job: the four-step submission form.
• Employer Dashboard: employers' jobs, applications and company profile.
• Employer Sign-up.
• Job Alerts: where visitors sign up for alerts and manage them.

Jobs are listed at /jobs/. You can also add the Job Search block to any page.

Choose how the board works

Go to Jobs → Settings. The settings are in tabs:

• General: the board mode (a marketplace with many employers, or a careers page for one company), jobs per page, how long a job stays live, whether employers' jobs wait for approval (moderation), and what expired job pages do.
• Employers: employer sign-up, expiry reminder emails, and the dashboard and Post a Job pages.
• Applications: whether a resume is required, and its maximum size.
• Salary: the default currency.
• Payments, Job alerts, Compliance and Location: see below.

With moderation on, new jobs wait under Jobs → Moderation, where Boardwise also flags missing salary ranges, gendered job titles and questions about salary history.

Charge for listings

Paid listings use Stripe Checkout, with payments going to your own Stripe account.

1. Under Jobs → Settings → Payments, turn on paid listings, and set the price per job and the featured upgrade.
2. Add your Stripe secret key (test or live).
3. In Stripe, add a webhook pointing at https://your-site/wp-json/boardwise/v1/payments/stripe with the events checkout.session.completed, checkout.session.async_payment_succeeded, checkout.session.expired and charge.refunded.
4. Paste the webhook's signing secret into the settings.

Until the keys and webhook secret are in, employers can save jobs but not submit them, and you see a notice. Orders are listed under Jobs → Orders.

Job alerts and email

Job alerts are on by default. Visitors can turn any search, category or job type page into an alert, confirm their address, and choose daily or weekly digests. Every alert email has a one-click unsubscribe.

Alerts are sent with WordPress's own mail function, in batches. For a board with many subscribers, use an SMTP or email-delivery plugin so mail is authenticated (SPF and DKIM) and reaches inboxes.

Location search

Radius search works out of the box for the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom and Australia, using postal codes and towns included with the plugin. Under Jobs → Settings → Location you can:

• choose the default country and miles or kilometres;
• download postal codes for another country from GeoNames (only the country code is sent);
• switch on OpenStreetMap Nominatim to look up places the built-in data doesn't know. It's off by default; when on, the place name is sent to OpenStreetMap, at most once a second.

Import jobs

Go to Jobs → Import. Boardwise imports from WP Job Manager, Simple Job Board, WP Job Openings, CSV and XML files. Every import can be run as a dry run first, runs in the background, and redirects old job links to the new pages. Running it again updates what it imported instead of making duplicates.

You can also add a Greenhouse job board as a feed, which Boardwise checks daily. Jobs that leave the feed close automatically.

Moving a whole board? See Moving from WP Job Manager.

Themes, blocks and shortcodes

Boardwise's pages are made of blocks you can rearrange in the editor. Jobs have a Job details panel in the block editor. To change a template, copy it into a boardwise/ folder in your theme.

For classic themes and page builders there are shortcodes:

• [boardwise_job_search]: search with results
• [boardwise_jobs]: a list of jobs
• [boardwise_job_filters]: the filters on their own
• [boardwise_company_jobs]: one company's jobs

The employer pages and job alerts are blocks; the setup notice creates pages with them.

Privacy and compliance

• Pay transparency (Jobs → Settings → Compliance): off, a warning for employers and moderators, or a salary range required before publishing. The rules summarise US state and city laws; they aren't legal advice.
• Retention: applications, resumes and their consent records older than the period you choose are deleted automatically each day.
• Self-identification: optional voluntary EEO and VEVRAA questions, kept apart from applications and reported only as totals under Jobs → Self-ID report.
• Personal data: candidates' data can be exported and erased with WordPress's tools under Tools, and Boardwise adds suggested text to Settings → Privacy.

Resumes are stored in a private folder and only sent to the job's employer, an administrator or a moderator.

Installing Boardwise Pro

1. Install and activate the free Boardwise plugin first.
2. Download Boardwise Pro from your account, then go to Plugins → Add New → Upload Plugin, upload the zip and activate it.
3. Pro's screens are in the Jobs menu: Packages, Coupons, Hiring, Search engines, Feed rules and AI.
4. For candidate profiles, use the Create the candidate page button Pro offers, or create a page with the [boardwise_candidate] shortcode and choose it under Jobs → Settings → Employers.

Pro's AI provider keys, USAJOBS key and Google credentials are encrypted with a key derived from your site's salts. Make sure the salts are defined in wp-config.php; WordPress's installer does this.

Common questions

Does Boardwise work with my theme?

Yes. It works with block themes and classic themes, and stays readable on dark theme styles.

Are resumes public?

No. They're kept in a private folder and only sent to the employer of the job, an administrator or a moderator, after a permission check.

Where are Stripe keys kept?

In your site's database with the other settings, as WordPress plugins usually do, so keep database backups private.

Is there an API?

Yes: a REST API under boardwise/v1, WP-CLI commands under wp boardwise, and documented hooks and provider interfaces.

Does Boardwise send data anywhere?

Not to us. It contacts Stripe, OpenStreetMap, GeoNames or Greenhouse only when you switch on the feature that needs them; the readme's "External services" section lists what each one receives.