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I’ve started using TV Catchup so I can have the news running in the background, or some trashy TV while I’m browsing online – and what a great little web site it is.
No jerky images or audio and all of the channels that are available on Freeview. Not sure if it’s available outside of the UK, but it’s pretty handy and well worth a look! |
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This question seems to be asked all the time, often by people that don’t necessarily understand what’s involved with setting a web site up, or who have been bamboozled by agencies, developers or designers trying to charge them excessive fees.
The basics
It really depends on what level of technical competency you have personally. Purchasing a domain name and hosting it are the two major up front costs that you need to consider, because after that, everything else can be carried using Open Source software. In the UK, if you’re doing it all yourself – you can get decent hosting and a domain name, all for about £30 a year – as long as you’re willing to the design and promotion work yourself.
The intermediate options
Off the shelf scripts, are where you can really supplement existing Open Source web offerings – but these are only really beneficial if you’re trying to achieve something non-standard. General prices for functional scripts that can often be bolted on to existing open source web site structures range from about £20 to £100, although increasingly some authors are pursuing subscription models (for updates and support primarily), or are asking for donations if you use and benefit from their hard work.
The advanced options
Really, unless you have tons of cash or are producing a web site for a company – the advanced option of paying for a web team or designer to put a web site together for you will be beyond the means of most people. Prices can range from a reasonable £100-ish, to thousands and tens of thousands…
But with so many free options available, why would many people want to look at these expensive options. A little bit of hard work and systematic research and anyone can begin creating their own web site, whatever their requirements.
There is an updated version of this article available here.
What are job aggregators?
They’re online services that trawl through the Internet, locating and indexing jobs from job boards and employers according to the niches or geographies in which they operate. They’ve been around for a while – and almost all of them make the claim of having the most jobs, being the largest job board, or the most visited. The simple truth is that they’re quite similar to each other.
Despite this, they should still play a role in both a candidate’s job seeking arsenal and in a recruiters or employers advertising portfolio.
For advertisers (recruiters and employers):
The best thing is that most of these job aggregators are free. Most of them operate without requiring any direct intervention and they’ll silently come and trawl your site, finding your jobs and advertising them on your behalf. Because they’re mostly doing this in real-time, you also don’t have to worry about ensuring positions are removed when they’re filled, or expired. Just remove them from your own listings and the aggregators will reflect this when they next re-index or aggregate your job feeds.
Some of the aggregators will come to your site automatically and start aggregating your jobs, especially if you readily make available RSS or Atom based feeds of your jobs. Others, you have to specifically register with them and provide the direct links to where they can pick up the feeds. It’s still limited input, for what can often be access to quite a large potential market of jobseekers.
For jobseekers:
The job aggregators represent a quick, easy and accessible route to the latest jobs. They can save time by reducing the number of sites that you have to visit to find the jobs that are relevant to you and as they’re typically presenting job search results in real-time, you can be assured you’re accessing the latest vacancies. The bad news is that there can be serious problems with duplication; and some sites will try and bundle additional (sometimes chargeable) services with the job searching process.
For web developers:
Some of the aggregators have started offering APIs now too, so that you can directly integrate a fully functioning job search element in to your web site. The benefit to this is that can be another added facet for the services you provide to your users. The main downsides are that you’re effectively directing traffic away from your web site and you never hold the jobs yourself on your site, therefore there are no SEO benefits here. You also have little control over what’s displayed or how it appears. But they’re low effort, zero cost options that certainly can be a part of some sites.
Alternatively, you could consider developing your own aggregator using off the shelf php scripts, or considering plugins for blogs or CMS systems that can mostly do the job for you.
List of job aggregators:
This list is going to be forever changing, so right now, these are the main job aggregators (primarily UK based) that seem to have the highest profiles
Simply Hired – http://www.simplyhired.co.uk/
Indeed – http://www.indeed.co.uk/
Workhound – http://www.workhound.co.uk/
Work Circle – http://www.workcircle.co.uk/
Job Applications –http://www.jobapplications.co.uk/
Career Jet – http://www.careerjet.com/
Job Safari – http://www.jobsafari.co.uk/
So this web site is now a handy place for me to keep everything that I do online ordered and accessible, as well as test various online technologies and functionality.
My skills and experience includes:
Ok – so I’ve had a go at adding some content… it’s just some shopping links that I use regularly. They’re HERE