WP Job Manager Forked to Create Listings, A Generic Plugin with Niche Extensions

Listings is a new plugin that is aiming to be the “One Listings Plugin to Rule Them All.” The Look and Feel, a team led by Scott Basgaard and Coen Jacobs, created Listings to provide a generic platform that will support niche extensions for things like a job board, real estate, cars, and kittens.

“We like to think about Listings as being a platform, where you can install just the functionality that you need,” Coen Jacobs said in a post explaining the technical backstory of the plugin. “Having this shared platform via the core plugin gives us a unique opportunity to make our add-ons compatible across the platform.”

Since the WordPress community has already created a host of solutions for managing listings, the fastest way for Basgaard and Jacobs get this concept off the ground would be to leverage an existing project. They found Mike Jolley’s open source WP Job Manager to be decent fit.

“After the WooThemes acquisition by Automattic, we saw a decline in activity in the WP Job Manager GitHub repository,” Jacobs said. “We thought that was a shame, as we really liked the plugin.

“Since the jobs niche would be the first one for us to release a Listings extension for, we started exploring the possibility of forking WP Job Manager into two separate plugins – one generic core and one jobs specific extension.”

Separating specific use cases into add-ons, instead of packing loads of settings into the base Listings plugin, ensures that the core is easy to configure.

The Look and Feel plans to make the niche extensions available for free, starting with the Jobs extension released at the end of July. They are also seeking to collaborate with theme developers to design themes for the project.

The Look and Feel is currently working on creating commercial add-ons for things like a payments add-on for selling posts on a job board. You can keep track of their progress by following the Listing’s development website. The platform is not yet ready for users who want a full-featured job board that they can monetize, but the bare bones are in place and available on WordPress.org.