OpenX is an open-source ad management platform. I wrote an overall review of OpenX (aka OpenAds) in my last post which discusses the benefits of the platform and also points out some of the cons. One of the most important uses of OpenX is rotating banners. Banner rotation is very easy with OpenX. But unless you know how to do it you might find yourself lost in documentation. It consists of 2 steps.

STEP 1: Launch Your Advertising Campaign

Follow steps to launch your first advertising campaign. This is explained in details in the presentation from OpenX (aka OpenAds).

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STEP 2: Banner Rotation

After you have your first ad campaign up and running proceed to this step. Create a new advertiser and create a new campaign with the proper banner-size. Then select the publishing spot where you want to display the banner. If the spot already has another ad running then OpenX will automatically enter the new ad in rotation with the old one. Based on the weights or costs defined you can control how often any particular banner is displayed.

Technical Details

OpenX download is a 30MB package which includes everything you want from a mature advertising management solution. The huge PHP script might look like an over sized and complicated setup. But the size is caused by template data and performance statistics gathering and reporting scripts. The statistics and reporting data that is collected is not a substitute to Google Analytics, but it is enough to make OpenX valuable. In fact, my reason behind installing OpenX was to do some split-testing and collect hard numbers on various affiliate offers.

OpenX and Private Ad Sales

Another benefit of using OpenX is private ad-sales. With OpenX you automate the process. You can assign weights to all campaign banners according to costs or any other metric and use them in rotation. For high paid campaigns you set it to show permanently for the advertising duration. After the ad term is over OpenX will automatically take it out of rotation and fill in the spot with house ads or AdSense, depending on its configuration.

Bad Side of OpenX

Support for OpenX is one of the most lacking aspects. The open-source community is helpful and supportive. Any help that you need is restricted to Googling the error messages and trolling through the OpenX (previously known as OpenAds) support forums. The OpenX Forums are a great source for troubleshooting. But it can be a difficult place to locate your exact problem and hopefully find a solution. During my experience with OpenX I ran into a couple of error which is more like bugs. I saw a couple of open forum posts on the exact same error. But only one of them was answered. I will discuss the specifics of the error and resolution in a later post. But before installing OpenX understand that it has a high learning curve. It is not like WordPress, following tutorial steps will only take you so far.

WordPress development team has announced the new release candidate of the WordPress blogging platform. The 2.5 release does not have a slew of new features. This release is focused on user experience and how to make it easy for everyone to use WordPress. By default the blogging platform hides away the unnecessary and advanced features from plain view. This makes the interface look very clean and user friendly. Unfortunately the top-level menus and submenus still require clicking through to individual pages and this adds precious time to switch between each action. I would love to see drop down menus instead of page links which would make the experience much quicker. In this way users can focus more on writing quality content and less on navigating.

WordPress development team describes the new release with a ton of feature enhancements. ”A customizable dashboard, multi-file upload, built-in galleries, one-click plugin upgrades, tag management, built-in Gravatars, full text feeds, and faster load times sound interesting?” WordPress has come a long way since its inception and the plugins and features make it a very powerful blogging platform. The various screenshots of the WordPress 2.5 release are presented below. I tried to include all the images that have changed from the previous release. A word of caution to all those who want to upgrade their WordPress installs – this is not the final release. So there are plenty of bugs and plugin incompatibilities. Before you upgrade your primary blog I would strongly recommend look for upgraded plugins. If possible test the new WP 2.5 release on a test system which is completely separate from your primary blog. Download the new release and take it for a spin. Otherwise check out the screenshot gallery below.

Mozilla Messaging looks to simplify email messaging. The Mozilla team backed by the Mozilla Foundations already simplified web-browsing with the Firefox browser. Can they repeat their success by creating effortless email management? Some of the questions posed by Mozilla Messaging shows that they are on the right track.

What if…

• Getting lots of email was helpful, not overwhelming? Could it even be fun?
• Finding out what’s important or new was obvious?
• It was easy to broadcast, and keep the personal private?
• Software could take into account how people communicate, rather than requiring people to understand how it works?

The open-source email project is currently working on Thuderbird. But that is not the sole focus of the Messaging group. The project will undoubtedly revolve around the Thunderbird client. But their goal is to manage email communication and make everyone’s lives easier. There have no major announcements from the group or its founders since its press release. But several influential organizations are paying close attention to the development of Mozilla Messaging. Wired magazine thinks Mozilla Messaging will give Thunderbird a much needed boost by developing ”a much more varied product which handles e-mail, RSS feeds, calendaring, multi-protocol chat, contact management and possibly even SMS and VoIP”. I am looking forward to that combo as well.