PWA

You can let visitors add your job board to their home screen as an app. Pro ships an installable web app (a manifest and a service worker). It is a switch, and it is off on new sites.

Turn the app on or off

Go to Career Board > Settings > Integrations. The PWA settings card has an Installable app switch. Save the tab to apply it.

• New installs start with the switch off.
• Sites that already had the app before 1.8.1 keep it on after the update.
• Switching it off removes the manifest link. A browser that installed the app earlier fetches the worker again, which clears its cache and unregisters itself.

What you get when it is on

Feature	What it does
Web app manifest	Lets browsers offer to install the board as an app.
Service worker	Keeps a copy of job, company and resume pages shown to signed-out visitors, used only when the visitor is offline.
Brand colour	The browser bar of the installed app uses your Brand colour.

Pages always load from the network first. The worker never keeps a page that was shown to a signed-in member, so one member’s page cannot be shown to another on a shared device.

When BuddyNext runs an app

A site can have one service worker for its address, so two apps would replace each other. When BuddyNext’s installable app is on, Career Board registers no manifest or worker. Your job pages become part of BuddyNext’s app, and BuddyNext’s worker caches the Career Board scripts and styles. The Installable app switch then has no effect, and its description says so.

To make another plugin’s app carry the job board instead, return true from the wcbp_pwa_host_app_active filter.

Set the colour

The installable app uses your Brand colour, the same colour as your emails and the mobile app. Go to Career Board > Settings > Brand to change it. The default is #4F46E5. The PWA settings card links to it.

Set a site icon

Go to Settings > General > Site Icon and upload a square image of at least 512 by 512 pixels. The manifest uses the 192 and 512 pixel versions. Without a site icon the manifest has no icons.

How it works

Two files are served from your site’s address, including when the site lives in a subfolder:

• /wcb-manifest.json - the app name (your site name plus “Jobs”), short name “Jobs”, start page set to your jobs page (the page assigned under Career Board > Settings > Pages, or the home page if none is set), standalone display, white background and the Brand colour.
• /wcb-service-worker.js - the service worker.

The plugin answers both, so you do not need to save permalinks. The manifest link and the service worker are added only on job archive pages, single job pages, and the jobs archive, employer dashboard and candidate dashboard pages you set under Career Board > Settings > Pages.

The service worker handles only page loads under your jobs, companies and resumes pages and under the job, company and resume addresses, whatever your site calls them. It fetches from the network. It keeps a copy only when the server marked the response as served to a signed-out visitor, and it uses that copy only when the network fails. The cache is named after the plugin version, so an update clears the old cache.

To change the manifest in code, use the wcbp_pwa_manifest filter.

Install the app

Browsers that support installing web apps can offer to install the board from the jobs pages. The installed app opens without the browser toolbar. Browsers that do not support service workers show the site as normal.

Push notifications

Web push is not built. The installable app does not send browser push notifications, and there is no browser subscription.

Push is for the native companion app. When a member signs in to the companion app, the app registers its Expo push token with POST /wcb/v1/push/register-device (fields expo_push_token and platform of ios or android). Every event that adds a row to the notification bell is then sent to that member’s devices through Expo’s push service. See Notifications.

Limits

• The installed app opens on your jobs page. Pages outside your jobs, companies and resumes pages are not kept for offline use.
• Only pages shown to signed-out visitors are available offline. A signed-in member sees the normal “offline” screen of the browser when the connection drops.

Developer reference

Hook	Type	Purpose
wcbp_pwa_manifest	filter, (array $manifest)	Change the manifest before it is sent.
wcbp_pwa_host_app_active	filter, (bool $active)	Return true when another plugin’s app should carry the job board. Default is whether BuddyNext’s app is on.
buddynext_pwa_asset_paths	filter owned by BuddyNext	Career Board adds its plugin URLs so BuddyNext’s worker caches them.

The switch is stored in the wcbp_pwa_enabled option.