Tue Dec 19 2023
I recently launched a local job board for my home town, huddersfieldjobs.com, using only AdonisJS and a few weeks of tinkering away in the evenings. In this article, I’ll break down the story of how it came about and my future plans for it now that it’s live.
This idea came about because I saw a few problems with existing job board websites and wondered what it’d be like to create my own job board website. I’d experienced this problems myself and heard stories from friends experiencing some of the same issues
These problems were;
With the problems identified, I started piecing together a plan for how I’d build a job site and the features on the site. I wanted to keep it simple at first, so I deployed a simple version using APIs from existing job sites but limited to jobs listed in my home town.
Once the simple version was built and deployed, I started working on basic features such as user accounts and creating a business on the site. For user authentication, I used Adonis auth’s built-in social login functionality, which automatically created an account for the user from their Facebook/Google account.
Creating a business was next, for this I used a form that created a “pending” business in the database, the idea being that a “pending” stage would stop anyone from signing up and posting anything on the site. The form collected information such as their website and social accounts as well as the categories (or industry) they were in to allow for filtering down the road.
Other features I worked on after this were the ability to save a job if you’re a normal user, and little things like uploading a business image. Additionally, I built a very simple admin panel so that I could see every user, business and jobs on the site.
The time had come to launch the improved site. During development, I’d had this idea that I wanted to deploy working versions of the site as quickly as possible and not be stuck on a project for months without ever deploying it. To stick to this idea, I’d broken down the features I wanted on the site into 3 phases;
With phase 2 ready and launched, I realised the best thing was to scrap phase 3 and actually refine features already added previously. This included an easier to navigate layout, bug fixes, and adding a search page that I’d missed in phase 2 to save time.
In this time, I also added LogTail for monitoring which worked at first, then didn’t, then did again. This meant I could track errors users were having around the site and deploy fixes for them.
Outside of the development, I’d created a Facebook and Instagram page as I figured these were the two best channels to connect to businesses in the local area. Using Facebook’s Meta Business Tools, I could link both accounts and post directly to both at the same time.
I used Canva and a pre-made template to create “Feature” posts showing off parts of the site which I then scheduled to post on both Facebook and Instagram at 9am the next day.
Additionally, I’ve also posted on the town’s subreddit (which got mixed responses, but lots of pageviews) and contacted a few businesses in the area.
The goal for now is to get the word out about the site around the town and getting more businesses signed up to the site. So far, over 1000 people have seen the site and the socials are growing steadily. I’m hopeful that it’ll grow but at a steady pace, so maybe in a few months time I’ll write another review to see whether site was a win or fail.
As for development, there’s only one or two changes I want to make to the site as it can pretty much run by itself, besides the verifying of new businesses. I’m also thinking of cleaning the code up and packaging it into a product, something along the lines of “Pre-made Job Board Site” but that’s not a high priority yet.
Thanks for reading and happy coding!