Email Notifications

WP Career Board sends automatic emails for key events. All emails use WordPress’s built-in wp_mail() function and are fully customizable.

Notification Events

Email	Sent To	Trigger
New Job Pending Review	Admin	Employer submits a new job
Job Approved	Employer	Admin approves a pending job
Job Rejected	Employer	Admin rejects a pending job
Job Expired	Employer	Job reaches its expiry date
Application Received	Employer	Candidate applies to their job
Application Confirmation (Candidate)	Candidate	Registered candidate submits an application
Application Confirmation (Guest)	Guest	Guest applicant submits an application
Application Status Changed	Candidate	Employer updates application status (Reviewing, Shortlisted, Rejected, Hired)

Managing Notifications

Go to WP Career Board → Settings → Emails.

Each notification can be:

• Enabled or disabled - toggle the switch to turn it on or off
• Customized - edit the email subject and body text

Click the email name to expand the editor for that notification.

Send Test Email

Each template ships with a Send test button on the right of the row. Clicking it dispatches a one-shot copy of that email to the admin user’s address with sample merge-tag values, so you can preview the rendered template before any real applicant sees it.

The button works for both enabled and disabled templates - disabled templates are still rendered and dispatched for preview, but their log rows are tagged sent_test in the activity log so admin previews stay separate from production delivery metrics. A green check + “Sent” label appears for 2.5 seconds after a successful dispatch, then resets.

If the button shows “Failed”, check:

• An SMTP plugin is configured (the local dev mail handler often fails silently)
• The admin user has a valid email address on their profile
• The Email Activity Log row says sent_test for the most recent attempt - if the row is missing, see the self-heal note below

Email Placeholders

Use these placeholders in email subjects and bodies - they are replaced with real values when the email sends:

Placeholder	Value
{job_title}	The job listing title
{company_name}	The employer’s company name
{candidate_name}	The applicant’s full name
{application_status}	Current status of the application
{dashboard_url}	Link to the employer or candidate dashboard
{job_url}	Link to the job listing page
{site_name}	Your WordPress site name

Email From Name and Address

Go to WP Career Board → Settings → Notifications to set:

• From Name - the sender name shown in inboxes (e.g. “Career Board”)
• From Email - the reply-to address for all WCB emails
• Admin Notification Email - where admin alerts (e.g. new job pending review) are sent

SMTP / Deliverability

For reliable email delivery, use an SMTP plugin (WP Mail SMTP, FluentSMTP, or similar). WordPress’s built-in mail function can land in spam without SMTP configuration.

Email Activity Log {#email-activity-log}

Every dispatched email writes a row to wp_wcb_notifications_log and surfaces on the Activity Log tab at the bottom of Settings → Emails. Rows show the event type, channel, recipient, status (sent / failed / sent_test / failed_test), and timestamp.

The log table is created on plugin activation. If for any reason the table is missing (e.g. a database migration dropped it, or the plugin was installed pre-1.0.x and skipped the activation routine), the dispatch path self-heals the table on first send rather than failing silently - your previously missing log entries will start populating from the next dispatch onward.

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Pro Email Notifications (Pro)

WP Career Board Pro extends the email system with three additional transactional emails. You can customise the subject line and enable or disable each one from Career Board -> Settings -> Emails.

Job Alert Digest

• Recipient: Candidate
• Trigger: Fired when the Job Alerts module finds new jobs matching a candidate’s saved search
• Content: A list of matching job titles with direct links

Credit Top-Up Confirmation

• Recipient: Employer
• Trigger: When a credit purchase completes via a supported payment gateway (WooCommerce, Paid Memberships Pro, or MemberPress)
• Content: Confirmation of the purchase and updated balance

Low Credit Balance Warning

• Recipient: Employer
• Trigger: Fired when an employer’s credit balance reaches zero
• Content: Balance warning and a link to the Employer Dashboard to purchase more credits

Email Template Customisation

All Pro emails use the same templating system as Free emails. To override a template, copy the relevant file into your theme’s wp-career-board/emails/ folder (the same override location Free uses), or register a custom template directory with the wcb_email_template_dirs filter.

In-App Notification Bell (Pro)

The notification bell appears in the Employer Dashboard and Candidate Dashboard. It shows a live unread count and drops down to display a list of recent notifications, each with a message and a link to the relevant page.

Events That Trigger Bell Notifications

Event	Who Receives It	Message Example
Application submitted	Employer	“Jane Doe applied for Senior PHP Developer”
Application submitted	Candidate	“Your application for Senior PHP Developer was submitted”
Application status changed	Candidate	“Your application for Senior PHP Developer is now Shortlisted”
Job approved	Employer	“Your job ‘Senior PHP Developer’ has been approved”
Job rejected	Employer	“Your job ‘Senior PHP Developer’ was not approved”
Job expired	Employer	“Your job ‘Senior PHP Developer’ has expired”

All notifications are stored in the wcb_notifications database table. The is_read flag is set to 0 on insert. The bell badge count reflects the number of unread rows for the current user.

Deadline reminders {#deadline-reminders}

New in 1.1.0 - candidates who saved a job but haven’t applied get automated reminders before the application deadline closes.

Reminder schedule

When	Email
3 days before the deadline	“Your saved job is closing soon” reminder
1 day before the deadline	“Last chance to apply” final reminder

Both reminders are skipped if:

• The candidate has already submitted an application for that job, OR
• The candidate has un-saved the job, OR
• The job has been closed / removed before the cron fires.

Cron event

Registered as wcb_send_deadline_reminders, runs daily.

WordPress’s wp-cron triggers it on the next page load after the scheduled time - for low-traffic sites, install a real cron job that hits wp-cron.php to keep timing accurate.

To trigger manually:

wp cron event run wcb_send_deadline_reminders

Disabling deadline reminders

The deadline reminder is one of the email templates on the Career Board → Settings → Emails tab. Toggle its Enabled switch off to stop the reminders. The cron stays scheduled (so re-enabling is one click) but the disabled template is not dispatched.

Toggling the template off is the supported way to stop the reminders and is all most sites need.

To stop the cron entirely as well (for example, on a staging environment), unschedule the event with WP-CLI:

wp cron event delete wcb_send_deadline_reminders

Or unschedule it in code:

$timestamp = wp_next_scheduled( 'wcb_send_deadline_reminders' );
if ( $timestamp ) {
    wp_unschedule_event( $timestamp, 'wcb_send_deadline_reminders' );
}

The plugin re-schedules the event on the next page load, so deleting it is mainly useful when the plugin is also being deactivated.

Email template

Standard plugin email format with the configured logo, header/footer. Subject line: “Your saved job ‘{{job_title}}’ closes in {{days}} days”.

Custom merge tags available:

Tag	Value
{{candidate_name}}	Candidate first name
{{job_title}}	Title of the saved job
{{company_name}}	Company that posted the job
{{deadline_date}}	Localized deadline date
{{days}}	Days until deadline
{{job_url}}	Direct link to the job page

Override the template by copying modules/notifications/templates/emails/deadline-reminder.php into your theme’s wp-career-board/emails/ folder.