Best backend?
I'm building a simple Job Board for developers. I want to build the front end using React in the form of Gatsby. What backends would you recommend? Wordpress probably lends itself to this project for custom post types - I just don't know how I would handle people posting jobs, and taking payments?
I’ve been burned by WP. It’s very good for simple e-commerce, and blogging, but other than that. I’d go with the other recommendation.
If you are into python -> Django is definitely my favorite.
We used Ruby on Rails for Jobs for Voice and Stripe for payment.
https://jobsforvoice.com
Excellent site, how is going?
I recently tried Strapi (https://strapi.io/), an Open source Node.js headless CMS and it was awesome. I think it could work for your project.
It was super easy to set up and customize, the community is quite active, and I didn't encounter any major issues. I was also able to integrate Stripe for payments super easily. Managing the database was amazing. It can all be done through the UI, which to me as a non-expert in the DB side was a major relief and time saver. In fact even my non-developer partners were able to add records to the DB for demo purposes and things like that.
My biggest con was that I had a bit of trouble managing user types, roles and login systems. However, this may be because I was hosting the frontend on Netlify (static) and because I am no expert on that side.
I used Nuxt.js (Vue) for the client side, Strapi as the backend, and Mongo as the DB.
Hi Tom, I guess, I am the only one in favour of Wordpress. Wordpress is perfect for all the stuff, you do not want to develop yourself: Customer-sign-in, forgotten passwords, payments, recurring payments, account editing and invoices. This comes out of the box with little customization needed if you use woocommerce. And you get all other stuff you will need (Google-Analytics, Mailchimp-Integration, etc) with zero effort. And from there, send your customers to your own application with whatever backend you want. I personally love google app engine. The free services are enough for testing and first customers. And once you get more traction, it scales effortlessly. For connecting wordpress and your application, there is an API integrated in woocommerce, where you can get all customer credendials. I have programmed my app in this way: www.more-bookings.com.
I am happy to discuss this in more detail.
best regards, Christian
Backend languages and frameworks are all more or less equivalent, so just use whatever you know best. If you’re not familiar with any, I’d lean towards Node just because you’re ostensibly already familiar with JavaScript from building out the frontend.
This really says it all, if it's really just a simple CRUD app where people can sign up, post a job, update a job and pay for it you really don't need more. WordPress seems like the wrong choice if you are not a WordPress developer already and that's what would enable you to ship fastest.
There's already job-boards-as-a-service too, if you just want a job board and not build anything yourself.
Hey @dewey, that sounds pretty good. Do you know any PHP developers?
I don't unfortunately, but that was also just an example. Use what you are comfortable with. It's not a tech problem as it's pretty simple to build, any language or framework will do. You could probably even just write up Google forms and some static site generator + Netlify if you don't want to code much.
Looking at your profile it looks like you don't just need a job board for some other project but it's your main project.
In this case you'll either have to write down the specs and get a freelancer to build it for you, or sit down and use the language you are comfortable with to build it.
Use something with a good back-end framework (e.g. Rails, Laravel or Phoenix). Nothing matters as much as productivity early on.
I'd strongly recommend NOT using Node. If you go that route you'll have to deal with a weakly typed language with 20+ years of cruft . Even more importantly it's a gigantic, churning ecosystem with choices you'd need to make at every level of your app. It's quicker better to go with something opinionated that has a unified community where every common problem has a "default" library or solution.
This option is a little out there, but I absolutely loved the last app I built with GraphCMS for building a react + graphQL app. It was so nice having a backend that basically acted like a node app that had a nice CMS and that I didn't have to deploy myself.
I'd check out firebase. It should be almost free for you, and pretty easy to get started.
Some time ago I actually built a job board in WordPress as an experiment, it's still live although has no jobs on it: https://awesomejobs.co.uk/
It works but it was a nightmare to build and maintain. At the time I was a bit of a WordPress evangelist. Now, not so much.
WordPress is not designed for this. You can wrangle WordPress do to pretty much whatever you want, but that doesn't mean you should.
Job boards can be inherently quite simple. So just build a simple backend in whatever language you know best. You don't really need an admin area for this, just a database and some authentication if you're going to have user accounts. Create a simple REST API for getting and creating jobs and consume with your React app.
As for taking payments just use Stripe element drop-in.
This will give you a decent, lightweight(!) working job board that you can test the water with.
Hey Tom, I'm with the others - develop with what you are most comfortable/interested in.
However in the interest of expanding toolset, can I suggest a very developer/user friendly CMS https://statamic.com/
Built on Laravel (PHP) and worth checking out.
Good luck with the project 🙂
As a developer, Django which uses Python was very fast to setup and very secure right out of the box
That's exactly what SaaS Forge boilerplate was created for.
Backend (Python/Flask), Frontend (React), database (Postgres), user dashboard, payments, user management.
As others have said, Wordpress is a no-go.
NodeJS is a good option if you're already familiar with JS on the front and want to invest ahead of time in building backend.
However, even simpler and faster to implement without requiring much new things to learn at all, is Firebase. IMO, iterations can be done significantly faster with it than NodeJS, already covering broad range of auths (which is somethings devs would be able to appreciate) and implementing payments is identical between the two.
A simple node js server would fit your solution if you have some JS experience. You could also use serverless technology from like AWS or Google cloud with an API gateway if you want to be more budget efficient and scalable for future.
I wouldn't use Wordpress for this, it's simply not designed to do what you're trying. It's a blogging platform, and trying to force it to do more is like using a hammer on a screw.
You're requirements right now are fairly simple, so really any type of standard backed would work. You could go the headless route, and just set up some handlers to take care of everything. Having JS experience, you could also pretty easily set up a simple node server that handles what you need.