Why do I need this?

As mentioned above, themes or even other plugins (like my Field Editor) can add custom fields to WP Job Manager, and when these fields are added, they can potentially be optional fields (OR if you create/save from the admin area, regardless of whether they are optional or not).

If they are optional (or you enter no value from admin area), when WP Job Manager saves a listing it will save that meta value regardless of what the value is (even when it’s empty).  By using this plugin when the listing is saved or updated, it will automatically remove those empty meta values.

Supported Listing Types

• Job Listings
• Resumes (Resume Manager addon)
• Cariera Theme Companies
• Company Manager
• MAS Company Manager
• Techbrise/Astoundify Company Listings

Where can I get a copy?

You can find this for free on the WordPress plugin repository (just search from Plugins > Add New on your site), or at the link below:
https://wordpress.org/plugins/empty-meta-cleanup-for-wp-job-manager/

Empty Meta Cleanup for WP Job Manager

The entire codebase (besides existing cleanup) is open source, and you can report bugs or issues on the GitHub project:
https://github.com/tripflex/wp-job-manager-empty-meta-cleanup

How do I set it up?

There is pretty much no real setup required for this, besides activating it for whatever listing types you want to.

First step is to get a copy of the plugin as mentioned above, and after you activate the plugin you will see a new Meta tab in the associated settings area.

You can see an example of this in the screenshots below.  You can enable or disable the automatic removal for any associated listing type that you would like, and the plugin includes support for Resumes and Companies as well!

Enable/Disable in Job Settings Area

Enable/Disable in Company Settings Area

Enable/Disable in Resume Settings Area

What about existing meta?

If you have an active Field Editor license (version 1.12.2 or newer), there is custom integration included that will scan your entire database for any of these empty meta values, provide you with a list of found values, and then you can confirm to remove them if you wish.

When you have the Field Editor plugin active on your site (version 1.12.2 or newer), when visiting the Meta tab in the associated settings page (Job/Resume/Company), instead of seeing just a checkbox to enable/disable the meta cleaner on save/update, you will also see integration to scan the database for existing empty values.

YOU CAN ALSO ADD CUSTOM KEYS TO SEARCH … just manually enter in the key you want to search for, and then click on it in the dropdown to add to the list to scan for.

You can see an example of this in the screenshots below:

Existing Empty Meta Removal Scan

Empty Meta Removal Results

Requires Field Editor 1.12.2+
Support will be included in the next release of the Search and Filtering plugin as well (TBD)

What else can I do to speed up and optimize my WP Job Manager site?

Install the Index WP MySQL for Speed plugin!!  WordPress natively is not meant for the type of searching and handling required by some large (or even smaller) sites.  Use this plugin to help add indexes and speed up your site:

Index WP MySQL For Speed

As always before using this plugin PLEASE make sure you take a full site and database backup, and PLEASE test on a non-production site to make sure the plugin works the way you want!  

There are numerous filters available if you have specific meta keys you want to omit from the auto removal, check the github project for more details.

Prevent saving empty meta in database

Basically what this does is it prevents any value for a meta field, that is an empty string, or an empty array, from being saved to the database, ultimately meaning your database should only store actual values.  The reason this was not something already done is because of the way the core WP Job Manager plugin works.  It does not check if the value should be saved based on “what” the value is, it just checks if it was submitted with the form and saves it.  For example, if you have a field that is not required, when it is submitted through the form, it is still saved to the database as an empty value (by the core WP Job Manager plugin).  This update adds handling in my plugin that will check every custom or customized field for this.  Please note you must have saved the field using my plugin for this functionality to work on the field.  Even if you don’t want to make any changes to the field, just click on Edit in my plugin, and then save, and it will save the field configuration and the field will now be a “customized” one (even if you didn’t change anything).

This should help alleviate unnecessary database rows and ultimately make your site run faster!  This handling works both in the admin and frontend.  If you want to see it in action, enable the Post Meta Inspector from Debug tab (Field Editor Configuration Page) and try it out in the admin area!

If you want to disable this in the Frontend or Admin area, just add this your child theme’s functions.php file (omit the <?php, there only needs to be one at the top of the functions.php file),  or using the Code Snippets plugin:

https://gist.github.com/tripflex/b2ef3cc6fc1363d0f9cc39af0ee47eac

Include Field Meta in REST API

As there are many mobile apps starting to come out soon (Cariera), some of them will use REST API (or maybe even you do for external services).  A new setting is available under the “Advanced” tab when editing a field, where you can enable this setting.  Please note you will not see this setting for any taxonomy fields as those should already be handled natively depending on how you setup/created custom taxonomies.

Multiple Meta Keys in Auto Populate

You can now use multiple meta key in the auto populate feature!  All you have to do is separate them by a space and the plugin will handle the rest.  As an example, if you wanted to populate a field with a user’s full name, you would just enter first_name last_name in the auto populate field (take note of the space).

Astoundify Companies Plugin

This release adds support for the Astoundify Companies Plugin (yes there’s another one out there), albeit in beta though so please make sure to report any issues you have!  Unfortunately for me with all of the different company plugins out there, and integrations in different themes, it makes it much more difficult to maintain compatibility (or even add it), as they are using different post types, or many other changes/differences that I have to make sure to account for.  This release adds the initial support for the Astoundify version, but there unfortunately is only about 3 or 4 auto output locations available (due to the plugin itself not having hooks in many locations).

If you’re still looking for a Companies plugin I would recommend the free MAS Companies one or the Cariera theme which has it built in, as Astoundify for some reason removed me from their Slack Channel.  Support for this plugin is provided for clients who are already using this plugin, if you are not already, i do not recommend it.

If anything I suggest the Cariera theme as this developer is very active and we stay in constant contact to maintain compatibility.

Other Updates

There’s numerous other updates and fixes included with this release, head on over to the changelog to check them out!

First and foremost, MAKE A BACKUP! After backing up your current copy of the Field Editor plugin, MAKE SURE that you thoroughly test the new version!

Reason being, this version switches from using Chosen.js to Select2, which the conditional logic, dynamic child taxonomies, and multiselect fields all rely on.  This update also changes a bit how fields are passed around in the plugin, as well as how auto output is handled.

There shouldn’t be any issues, but depending on your situation (theme, custom configuration, overrides, etc) there could be issues with the switch to Select2 (more details below).

This update also requires WP Job Manager to be a minimum version of 1.32.0 (released January 2019)

Chosen.JS to Select2

As mentioned above, this version switches from using Chosen.js to Select2 (which is standard for WP Job Manager now), the only reason that Chosen.js has been used up until now was I had to rewrite a lot of the conditional logic and dynamic child taxonomies code that was originally coded for Chosen.js.

With the switch to Select2, this opens up the ability for future features like the ability for users to add custom taxonomies from the submit form (coming soon), as well as mobile support for multiselect items, and ultimately better looking select boxes.

If at any time you want to switch back to using Chosen.js, you can do so via the Field Editor Settings page as shown in the screenshot below.  Enable the setting “Chosen”.  

Disable Select2 and use Chosen.JS

This is only recommended as a last resort if you’re having issues.  If you do have problems, please open a support ticket and let me know.  This update also required updates to these field template files:

• multiselect-field.php
• select-field.php 
• term-multiselect-field.php
• term-select-field.php

Please make sure if you’re using template overrides, that you update yours to support Select2.  Open a support ticket if you need help with this.

reCAPTCHA v2 Invisible

reCAPTCHA v2 Invisible

This release also adds support for “Invisible” reCAPTCHA from Google.  This reCAPTCHA type will automatically handle detecting if Google thinks the user is a bot or not, and will decide whether or not to show the reCAPTCHA challenge, whereas the original supported version was a checkbox that required the user to select it before they could submit a listing.

PLEASE NOTE you MUST configure an invisible API key in the settings if you wish to use this feature.  You can not use the original or any existing reCAPTCHA api keys that you have configured already.  This is very easy to setup, and you can do so from Google’s website.

Invisible reCAPTCHA Configuration

To configure using the invisible reCAPTCHA you can do so by selecting “Invisible” under the Size setting for reCAPTCHA.

You can see an example of this in the screenshot on the left.

Cariera Theme Support

After a lot of requests from clients for support with the Cariera theme and the developer of that theme being very responsive, we have spent a lot of time working together to bring you guys an amazing update with lots of features.

The most important update with the theme support, is the support for the Company Fields which is included natively with the Cariera theme.  The “Companies” included with Cariera is basically the same features that you get from WP Company Manager, which is why the integration and support of WP Company Manager, which was a major undertaking, went hand in hand with the Cariera theme.

Support for Cariera theme also includes formatting and the ability to define custom icons to use when using auto output in the “Job Overview”, “Resume Overview” and “Company Overview” area that you can see in the screenshot on the right.  In the Auto Output configuration this area is the “Meta Start”, “Meta End” and “Meta After” areas (for Job, Companies, and Resumes).

Cariera uses Font Awesome 5 Free icons, you can find them here.  Once you find the icon you want to use, just use the value from class for the <i> element.  For example if the icon would be <i class="fas fa-address-card"></i> then you should enter fas fa-address-card into the classes field in auto output configuration.

WP Company Manager Support

One of the biggest updates from this release (besides Select2) is the support for the WP Company Manager plugin.  You will now see a “Company Fields” menu item under the main Companies menu item, where you can use the Field Editor plugin to configure those fields (conditional logic coming soon).  Pretty much everything below also applies to Cariera theme companies.

You will still see the “Company Fields” sub-menu item under the Job Listings main menu, but those should only be one or two at the most (to configure fields like the “Select Company” on job submit page).  When using WP Company Manager (or Cariera) you should probably never need to edit or add fields here (under Job Listings menu item), as they should all be configured under the main “Companies” menu item for editing fields.

Auto Output

Auto output configuration under these new “Company” fields can be configured to output on both Job Listing pages and Company Listing pages (most commonly on job listings).  You should see all the same auto output locations that you have available under job fields.

Shortcodes

When you want to output a specific “Company” field on a Job Listing, you must make sure that you use the field_group="company_fields" parameter/argument, so the plugin knows that you’re trying to output a field that is actually from the “company” and not from a field called “company_name” saved on a job listing.

[company_field key="company_name" field_group="company_fields"]

PHP

This is exactly the same as above, when using PHP to pull values for “Company Fields” you need to specify field_group in the arguments passed to the function.  For example:

<?php the_custom_field( 'company_specific_field', null, array( 'field_group' => 'company_fields' ) ); ?>

The second argument in that function call is null because we want to let the plugin auto detect the Listing ID to pull that value from.  If you want to pull from a specific listing, pass that value instead of null.

Other Updates

A major fix that came around with the companies handling, was fixing issues with the same meta key being used in different field sections.  This required a bit of work to maintain compatibility (for pulling/displaying values and storing configurations), but is now completely possible.

WordPress 5.5 also introduced removing jQuery Migrate, which some of my older code relied on, this has also been fixed in the latest release.

There are also numerous other tweaks and enhancements made to the plugin while these features above were integrated, which is even more reason to make sure and test your site when upgrading!

You can view the full changelog here

WP Job Manager 1.32.0+ Support

As many of you should already know, as of WP Job Manager 1.32.0+ the core handling for multiselect fields has changed from using Chosen.JS library, to Select2  library.  The last blog post I created described in extensive detail why this caused such an issue for the Field Editor plugin, and included instructions on how to downgrade to prior version.

With the release of version 1.8.9, you no longer will need to downgrade to an older version of WP Job Manager!

Temporary Chosen.JS Compatibility

While version 1.32.0+ of WP Job Manager does switch to using Select2 natively, it does still include the Chosen.JS library for compatibility with themes/plugins that require it.  For this release of the Field Editor plugin, the easiest way to handle compatibility while I finish up Select2 integration, was to have WP Job Manager multiselect fields to fallback to using Chosen.JS.

This means you will not need to worry about upgrading to the latest version of WP Job Manager, and having issues with conditional logic, dynamic child taxonomies, or multiselect specific field configurations like max selected, and more.

This release also adds and updates support for mobile devices, and all the features included with the Field Editor plugin, as that was one of the main reasons behind the core switch from Chosen.JS to Select2.  See the “Mobile Device Support” section below for more details.

This does not cause any issues with fields like searching for user in admin area that uses Select2.

If you want to read more specifics on the details of how this was done, see this documentation article.

HTML5 Required Validation

WP Job Manager Field Editor HTML5 Required Validation Scroll To

Enabling HTML5 Required validation allows users to be instantly notified about required fields, instead of having to wait for the page to reload showing the error at the top.

Unfortunately due to numerous compatibility issues with browsers and devices, as well as the fields themselves (wp editor, taxonomy dropdown), the required validation only worked in previous versions on a couple of fields.  With this release I have added numerous lines of code and specific handling to support all the included field types with this plugin.

I’ve also added code to automagically scroll the browser window, centering the invalid field to make it easy for the user to know what field needs to be updated.  See the screenshot on the top/left for an example of this new feature.

iPhone Fill Out Field

iPhone Select an Item

This also includes support for mobile devices, which allows the native browser to direct the user to what field is required and needs to be filled out.

As you can see in the screenshots on the right, iPhone natively does this as well.

These examples include standard text fields, as well as all the other fields, including dropdowns, multiselect, and even WP Editor (which is unheard of!)

iPhone will prompt the user to select an item, fill out a field, and makes the user experience much better in regards to required fields!

This also means no page reloads required just to see invalid fields!

WP Job Manager Field Editor HTML5 Required Validation WP Editor

As mentioned above, this release also includes integration with the WP Editor field type for required fields as well.  This did take some time to figure out, and work to integrate (as there’s nothing online I could find about anybody else doing this)

In order to do this, I had to add the wp-editor-field.php template file to the Field Editor plugin, adding customizations to handle this.

I’ve also added a filter to disable HTML5 required on WP Editor fields (while retaining support for other fields), in the instance that you have issues with this specific WP Editor required integration.  Contact me if you need help with this.

WP Job Manager Field Editor HTML5 Required Setting

Enabling or Disabling the HTML5 required feature is very easy to do, just head over to the Field Editor Settings page, and under the Fields tab, you will see the setting (which can also be seen in the screenshot on the right).

Support was also added in this version for the WP Editor, Taxonomy Select, Taxonomy Multiselect, Flatpickr Date & Time, Multiselect, and Select field types.

Please make sure to test your form if you are using HTML5 required as this is a major update for the handling!

If you are using the Dynamic Taxonomy feature, the HTML5 required handling is required on those specific fields and even if this setting is disabled, it will still be used on only the dynamic taxonomy fields (this is required for this feature).

Multiple Auto Output Locations

WP Job Manager Field Editor Multiple Auto Output Locations

This release also adds a new feature requested frequently by clients, which is the ability to select multiple auto output locations for a single meta key/field.

After upgrading, under the Output tab you will now see another field Additional Output where you can select any additional auto output locations you would like the field to be output at.

I am working on an advanced version of this feature, allowing you to specify custom configuration for each auto output, but in the meantime I went ahead and included this in the latest release until I can finish that feature up.

Sortable Image/File Upload Fields

WP Job Manager Field Editor Sortable File/Image Uploads

This feature is actually thanks for a couple of my clients that provided methods they used to handle this, which made it very easy to integrate into the plugin.

Originally this was only slated to be included for Jobify and Listify theme, but it should work any theme as long as it uses the standard WP Job Manager file upload template.

When using this feature, specifically with the Listify theme, it allows your users to re-order the gallery images after uploading them.

It should also work with any other themes that use multiple file uploads and rely on the ordering of those images/files for output.

WP Job Manager Field Editor Sortable File/Image Uploads Setting

To enable this feature head on over to the Field Editor Settings page, and under the Fields tab you will see a new setting.

By default this is disabled, so you will have to enable this if you want to have this feature on your site.

After enabling the feature and saving, any AJAX file upload fields should now be sortable using drag and drop.

Mobile Device Compatibility

WP Job Manager iPhone Native Select Handling

As mentioned above, the major driving reason behind the core WP Job Manager switch to Select2 from Chosen.JS was for mobile device support.  Chosen.JS natively does not support mobile devices, and relies on the device itself to provide things like multi-select and dropdown selection.

As you can see in the screenshot on the left, iPhone already does a good job of this by providing the select handling natively through the device.  Android also does the same/similar thing regarding select and multiselect fields.  I won’t go into all the details, but there also were numerous issues that had to be dealt with regarding these different mobile devices.

As of version 1.8.9, mobile support has been extended to work with the conditional logic, dynamic child taxonomies, and other features in the field editor plugin, until these features can be moved to Select2.

In this latest release, I spent a bit of time testing and fixing issues with mobile devices, for those who which to stick with Chosen.JS (or older versions of WP Job Manager), until the next major release of the Field Editor which will specifically target and support Select2.

Other Changes

Please see the Changelog for full details on this latest update

WP Job Manager Field Editor Dynamic Taxonomy Child Dropdowns Demo

Dynamic Taxonomy Child Dropdowns

Please see the documentation page (which includes tutorial video) for Dynamic Taxonomy Child Dropdowns, here:

Dynamic Taxonomy Child Dropdowns

I appreciate everyone’s patience while I worked on getting this new feature released.  Unfortunately it was not an easy task, and ended up running into all kinds of issues with compatibility, and functionality … and instead of shipping a broken version of the plugin, I spent many sleepless nights testing, updating, and working on this latest release.

Template Updates

Both the term-select-field.php and term-multiselect-field.php templates have been updated in this release, if you’re using your own custom template overrides, please make sure you update them to match the new versions, to support the dynamic child dropdowns.

Previous versions of Field Editor did not include the term-select-field.php so please make sure you check any template overrides.

Other Updates

Included with this update are a few other features (a couple listed below), you can find the full list on the changelog.

Advanced Field Configuration Tab

Exclude Terms

Under the advanced tab you will now also see a text box where you can enter in TERM ID values to omit from showing in the dropdown.  To specify multiple terms, separate them with a comma.

Output CSV

For multiple field types you will also now see an “Output CSV” option.  Enable this to output multiple values as Comma Separated Values (instead of linebreak, or wrapping with value wrapper)

Final Thoughts

I hope you guys are as excited to use these new features, as I am to release them.  This release adds over 2,200 lines of new code base, and has been in the works for numerous months, testing, debugging, and working on compatibility.

I have tested standard functionality in Jobify, Listify, Listable, Listee, WorkScout, and all standard WP Job Manager templates without any issues.  If you do come across a problem, please be sure to open a support ticket and let me know, so I can work on a fix for it.

Conditional Logic Animations/Transitions

This release includes an update that adds the ability to configure your conditional logic transitions/animations, using the very popular and widely used, Velocity.JS framework.   This is completely optional, and you can leave this disabled to maintain the origin/existing show/hide handling … but if you would like to customize it, hop on over to the field editor settings page, and enable this new feature and give it a try!

if_custom_field Shortcode

If any of you started using the new conditional shortcode features available in the Field Editor addon, you will be very happy to know that this release adds a new shortcode (3 actually), to alleviate the initial bug when using conditional shortcodes, due to the fact that you can’t nest shortcodes inside each other ( see here for more details ).

Well, i’m happy to say that you now have 3 available shortcodes to use, if_custom_field, if_resume_field, and if_job_field.  All three of these shortcodes do exactly the same thing, but having multiple available, allows you to nest if statements, inside other if statements ( see docs for more details ).

This also introduces a much easier to use syntax for the shortcodes, as you no longer have to make sure that you use the right attribute/argument based on the field type.  Previously, if you wanted to do a check on a single value field (non-taxonomy, non-multivalue), you had to use the if_contains or if_equals argument … and with multiple field types or taxonomies, you had to use has_value or has_value_containing.. well no more of that!

The new syntax will automagically determine the correct method to use, and will do everything for you.  All you have to do now is choose between using equals or contains:

[if_custom_field key="job_category" equals="north"]
North Category!
[/if_custom_field]

Head on over to the conditional shortcodes documentation for more details, including examples and more!

Admin Only fields in Conditional Logic

This release also fixes a bug in the conditional logic configuration area, where you were originally able to select an admin only field, to be used in the logic … which technically would never work correctly, as admin only fields never exist on the frontend .. so when the logic attempts to process and check the value, there’s no way to do that.

One would think, being as it’s an admin only field, for both security and peace of mind ..you would never want that visible or stored on the frontend of your site.  Well you would be surprised, as I got some grief from a few clients saying that the plugin had bugs I wasn’t fixing … which I can understand … somewhat … but I always take security and optimization of my plugins VERY seriously, and there’s no way i’m going to expose admin only fields on the frontend by default.

So with that said, you can no longer select admin only fields to be used for conditional logic checks …. by default, that is.

I still understand there may be a need to expose certain fields for functionality, or logic handling .. and those fields may not be something that needs to be “secured” from the user (it could be a value of yes, or no, etc).

That is why I have added multiple ways to enable admin only fields, to pass values to frontend for all admin only fields, for only certain ones, and more.

Head on over to the Conditional Logic Admin Only Fields documentation for more details, and examples.

Other Misc Fixes and Updates

You can see all of details for bug fixes, and updates, located on the Changelog page for WP Job Manager Field Editor