H-Net Job Guide: A Drupal Commerce Platform for Scholarly Job Listings

Sector(s)

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Organizations Involved

Zengenuity / DrupalTutor

H-Net is an international scholarly network that connects humanities scholars through its Commons platform. A critical part of H-Net's operations is the Job Guide, which provides paid academic job postings that fund much of the organization's work. The previous Job Guide was a custom PHP application, which was difficult to maintain, extend, and integrate with the Commons.

To address these challenges, Zengenuity rebuilt the Job Guide on Drupal and Drupal Commerce. The new system supports advanced moderation workflows, a flexible invoice and payment model (including the ability to split payments between check, wire, and credit card), and seamless integration with the Commons for job posting search and subscriptions. This transformation created a maintainable, extensible platform that supports H-Net's funding model and provides a better experience for job posters, H-Net staff, and job seekers.

Describe the project (goals, requirements and outcome)

Goals

Provide a sustainable, maintainable platform to replace the legacy PHP site.
Improve integration with the H-Net Commons for job visibility and subscriptions.
Support complex payment workflows with multiple payments per job posting.
Enhance moderation tools for administrators.
Ensure continuity by migrating all legacy job data.

Requirements

Drupal foundation with Drupal Commerce for e-commerce workflows.
Custom modules to implement business logic for moderation, invoicing, and multi-payment handling.
Integration with Authorize.net Accept Hosted Payments.
Notifications via Mattermost and webhook support for Zapier/Make.com/n8n.
Migration of job data from legacy MySQL database to Drupal nodes.

Outcome

A maintainable Drupal platform with flexible business logic.
Streamlined job moderation and administrative workflows.
Split-payment support, enabling checks, wires, and credit cards for a single posting.
Seamless integration with the Commons, including searchable jobs and subscription options.
Improved system status visibility with real-time Mattermost notifications.
A foundation that supports future automation and integrations.

The Finished Product

Job posts go through a custom checkout procedure where authors can choose add-ons, such as featuring the job post in listings.

Job posters can split their anticipated payments between multiple sources, including checks, wire transfers, and credit card payments.

After submitting their order, job posters get a custom invoice with instructions based on their payment methods. Credit card payments can be completed online, using Drupal Commerce's checkout workflow.

Job posts can be browsed and searched directly on the H-Net Commons.

Job posts can be browsed and searched directly on the H-Net Commons.Back to top

Why Drupal was chosen

The legacy Job Guide was built as a custom PHP application without the structure of a modern framework, which made it difficult to maintain. Adding new features or adjusting business logic required ad hoc code changes, and integration with the Commons was limited. Drupal provided a sustainable, extensible alternative. With Drupal Commerce, we could support H-Net’s complex payment workflows, while Drupal’s entity and workflow systems offered a robust way to model jobs, invoices, and moderation states.