Your First Day as a Site Owner

A complete walkthrough from “I just installed the plugin” to “my first employer posted their first job and a candidate applied.” Plan ~60-90 minutes for a thorough run. If you want to skim, the section headings below let you jump.

What you’ll have at the end

• A working job board at /find-jobs/ and /companies/ (a public /find-candidates/ directory is a Pro feature).
• One employer account that can post jobs.
• One candidate account that can apply.
• Email notifications wired and tested.
• A real test job published and a test application submitted.

Before you start

You need:

• WordPress 6.9+ on PHP 8.1+ (the plugin checks this on activation).
• An admin account on the site.
• The ability to send email from the site (SMTP plugin, host SMTP, or the site already sending email reliably).
• A theme that doesn’t aggressively override .entry-content styles. Most modern themes work; some opinionated ones (Astra Pro, certain GeneratePress configs) need a custom CSS sweep - that’s covered later.

If you want to test Pro features (AI, advanced credits, application pipeline, multi-board), install Pro too. The flow below assumes Free-only first, since Pro adds onto the same foundation.

Step 1 - Install

1. Plugins → Add New → Upload Plugin. Pick the wp-career-board.zip you downloaded.
2. Activate. The plugin spins up:
   • 3 database tables (jobs aren’t a table - they’re a CPT). Free creates its own tables; the credit ledger is a Pro table, not a Free one.
   • 3 custom roles: Employer, Candidate, and Job Moderator (the internal slug for Job Moderator stays wcb_board_moderator for back-compat). Banning an employer is a flag on the account, not a separate role.
   • 13 custom capabilities (see admin-guide/14-capabilities-and-roles.md).
   • Five CPTs: wcb_job, wcb_company, wcb_application, wcb_resume, and the admin-only wcb_board.
3. The Setup Wizard launches automatically. Don’t dismiss it - walk it.

If you can’t see the Setup Wizard, navigate to WP Admin → Career Board → Setup.

Step 2 - Walk the Setup Wizard

The wizard has two steps:

1. Create Pages - the wizard creates the pages your board needs and maps them in Settings. The pages created are:

   • Find Jobs (search + filters + listings).
   • Companies (the company directory).
   • Employer Registration (sign-up form for new employers).
   • Employer Dashboard (includes Post a Job).
   • Candidate Dashboard (includes the resume builder and account settings).
   • Post a Job (the standalone job form).

   If a matching page already exists (it already contains the relevant Career Board block), the wizard reuses it instead of creating a duplicate.

2. Sample Data - optionally install demo companies and jobs so the board isn’t empty while you test. You can remove the sample data later from Career Board → Settings → Import without re-running the wizard.

There is no “what’s your board for / who can post / how are postings paid for” questionnaire - those choices live in Career Board → Settings (Job Listings, Pages, Notifications, Emails) and you set them after the wizard.

Finish the wizard. You land on the Career Board settings screen.

Step 3 - Test email sending

Career Board sends nine transactional emails covering the application and job lifecycle: application confirmation (to the candidate), application received (to the employer/admin), application status changed, guest application, deadline reminder, job approved, job pending review, job rejected, and job expired. It does not send its own welcome, email-verification, or password-reset emails - those are handled by WordPress core. If your site can’t send email, everything downstream breaks silently.

1. Career Board → Settings → Emails. Each template row has a Send test button that emails the current admin a preview. Click it on any template.
2. If you receive it within 30 seconds: green light, move on.
3. If you don’t: install WP Mail SMTP or Fluent SMTP, configure your provider (SendGrid, Mailgun, Postmark, Amazon SES, your host’s SMTP), and retest.

This is the single most-overlooked step. Customers report “no applications coming in” - 70% of the time it’s “applications came in, the email failed, employer never knew.” Fix this on day one.

Step 4 - Set up email sender details

Career Board → Settings → Notifications. This tab holds the three sender settings:

• From Name - usually your site name, not “WordPress.” Defaults to your site name.
• From Email - must match your sending domain (DMARC / DKIM / SPF). If your site is example.com, the from email should be noreply@example.com or similar. Defaults to the site admin email.
• Admin Notification Email - where new-application alerts go when the posting employer hasn’t set a custom address. Defaults to the site admin email.

The individual email templates (application received, application status changed, job approved, etc.) and their enable/disable toggles live on the separate Emails tab. Open each there to review the copy, toggle it on or off, and send yourself a test.

• Application status changed - to the candidate. Keep enabled. This is the single most important candidate touchpoint after submission.

Step 5 - Add a Find Jobs link to your menu

The plugin created the pages but didn’t wire your menu.

1. Appearance → Menus.
2. Add: Find Jobs, Companies, Candidate Dashboard, Employer Dashboard, Post a Job. (A public Find Candidates directory is a Pro feature - add it only if Pro is installed.)
3. The Employer Dashboard / Post a Job links can be in the menu OR accessible only via the employer dashboard once they log in - your choice based on whether employers self-register or you onboard them manually.
4. Save.

Step 6 - Create your first test employer

Don’t post a job from your admin account - that hides bugs. Create an actual employer and test the flow.

1. Open a private window so you stay logged in as admin in the main browser.
2. Visit /employer-registration/ (or whatever you mapped the employer-registration page to).
3. Register with a real email you can check (e.g. your-name+test@gmail.com). The account is created with the Employer role.
4. Log in as that employer (registration uses the standard WordPress account flow; Career Board does not send a separate welcome email).

Step 7 - Post the first test job

Still as the test employer:

1. Click Post a Job from the employer dashboard.
2. Fill in:
   • Title: “Test Job - Senior Frontend Engineer”
   • Description: a paragraph or two.
   • Category: any (or create one inline).
   • Location: any city.
   • Type: Full-time.
   • Application: leave as “Apply through this site” (not “External URL”). External-URL testing comes later.
3. Submit.

If you set the posting cost to free, the job goes straight to Published. If you set “requires admin approval,” it sits at Pending Review - go back to your admin window and approve it from WP Admin → Career Board → Jobs.

The same Jobs screen is also where you handle reported listings: when a logged-in visitor reports a job (scam, spam, expired, misleading, or offensive), a Flagged filter appears at the top of the list. Open it, review the flagged job and the reasons in the Flags column, then either Dismiss flag (the listing is fine) or Unpublish (the listing is bad) from the row or bulk actions.

Verify the job appears on /find-jobs/. If it doesn’t:

• Check the job’s status (Published, not Draft).
• Check the deadline isn’t in the past.
• Check your theme isn’t redirecting /find-jobs/ somewhere.

Step 8 - Create your first test candidate

1. Private window (or a different browser / incognito).
2. There is no separate candidate-registration page. Open the Candidate Dashboard while logged out - it shows a Log in button that links to the standard WordPress login/registration screen. Register a normal WordPress account there.
3. Log in. By default any logged-in member can use the candidate experience (apply, save jobs, build a resume) without a dedicated Candidate role. If you turned on Settings → Job Listings → Require Candidate Role, assign the Candidate role to the account first.
4. Fill in profile: name, headline (“Senior Frontend Engineer”), skills, location.
5. Upload a resume PDF (any sample resume works).

Step 9 - Apply to the test job

As the candidate:

1. Open /find-jobs/ from the candidate’s logged-in browser.
2. Click the test job.
3. Click Apply.
4. The application form pre-fills from the candidate’s profile + resume.
5. Add a cover-letter paragraph.
6. Submit.

You should see a “thanks - application submitted” confirmation.

Step 10 - Verify the employer side

Back in the employer window:

1. Employer Dashboard → Applications. The test application should be visible.
2. Click into the application. The candidate’s resume should be attached and downloadable.
3. Email check - did the new-application email arrive at the employer’s inbox? If not, return to Step 3 and fix email sending.
4. Move the application’s status to “Reviewing.” Save.
5. Candidate email check - did the candidate receive a “your application status changed” email? If not, status-change notifications are off - re-check Settings → Notifications.
6. Move the application to “Shortlisted,” then “Hired.” Each one fires an email to the candidate.

Step 11 - Verify the candidate dashboard

Candidate window:

1. Candidate Dashboard → My Applications.
2. The test application should show status “Hired.”
3. Saved Jobs - bookmark another job from /find-jobs/. Confirm it appears here.
4. Profile - verify the profile is editable and changes save.

Step 12 - Clean up your test data

Once you’re satisfied:

1. Delete the test job from WP Admin → Career Board → Jobs.
2. Delete the test application from WP Admin → Career Board → Applications.
3. Delete the test candidate account from WP Admin → Users.
4. Delete the test employer account.

Or keep them and move them to a “test” status so you can iterate. Up to you.

What’s next

You have a working board. Now you’d usually pick a direction:

• 02-employer-end-to-end.md - what the real employer flow looks like (you’ve already done this once).
• 04-monetizing-your-board.md - if you want to charge for postings, get this set up early.
• ../admin-guide/14-capabilities-and-roles.md
  • granting wcb_post_jobs to specific staff or a third-party HR role.
• ../ai-features/01-overview.md - if you’ve also installed Pro and want to enable AI features.

Common day-one mistakes to avoid

• Skipping the email test. Everything breaks silently if email doesn’t send. Always test before you announce the board.
• Posting jobs from the admin account. Your admin sees everything and skips role gates. Always test as a real employer / candidate.
• Skipping the deadline. Newly posted jobs default to the listing lifetime set under Settings → Job Listings → Default listing lifetime (days) (default 30, range 1-365). A job is moved to the expired status by the daily expiry cron once it passes its deadline.
• Not wiring the menu. Employers and candidates can’t navigate if the menu doesn’t link to dashboards. Easy to forget; users notice immediately.
• Forgetting Pro’s license activation. If you also installed Pro, activate the license under Settings → License. The license drives automatic updates only - Pro features keep working without it, but you won’t receive update notifications until it is activated.