With the release of OpenX 2.6, many people will want to upgrade their OpenX (or Openads) system to be able to use all the exciting new features and user interface improvements. Not everybody, however, has the time, the skill or the experience to perform the upgrade themselves with confidence. I’m offering an Upgrade Service for this. For a fixed price, your OpenX software will be upgraded to the most recent stable version of OpenX 2.6.

Please review the OpenX upgrade service description document (PDF, 19 KB, new window) for detailed information.

If you’re interested, you can contact me directly via the OpenX consulting request form on this website.

Just before the weekend, OpenX.org announced the availability of the new OpenX Consultants Directory. This directory helps OpenX users (and people considering to start using OpenX) to find an independent consultant. Consultants offer their services to help with various jobs such as installation, configuration, upgrading, training, and website integration.

I’m listed too, no surprises there (just look me up). The new directory has a short form for every single consultant, to quickly request support in any of the areas mentioned. The directory also shows, for each consultant listed, their contributions to the OpenX community by participating in the OpenX support forums.

I’m very much in favor of this new open market place for OpenX consultancy, and I think it provides a tremendous opportunity for consultants looking to offer their services to the ever growing community of OpenX users world wide. I’d like to encourage anyone who feels they qualify as a consultant to register to be listed on the new directory.

In the future, OpenX will also be adding a client feedback feature, so you’ll be able to see what other people think about the services provided by the various consultants.

On July 4, 2008, I had the pleasure of attending the second ever OpenX seminar, held in Cologne, Germany. About 50 publishers (representing a wide variety of large and small sites) from Germany showed up, and 3 OpenX users from eBuddy in The Netherlands had traveled from Amsterdam to join the seminar. We were welcomed by Anna Skorupa and Simon Bailey from OpenX. Also present were Niels Leenheer (one of the original creators of phpAdsNew, OpenX’s predecessor), Heiko Weber (OpenX consultant) and Tobias Schwarz (another OpenX consultant).

Simon opened the seminar with a demo of the OpenX 2.5 beta release, focusing on new features and developments for the near future. He also showed some early work related to the OpenX plugins and extensions framework that’s going to be part of OpenX 2.7/2.8. The last subject before the lunch break was a presentation about an exciting new development at OpenX, the “marketplace”, a virtual exchange for advertisers, ad networks and publishers to improve transparency and performance of the display advertising market.

After lunch, Tobias Schwarz talked about optimizing performance of the OpenX system, by going over a real life case that was brought forward by one of the delegates. The tips he gave were about tuning & tweaking the MySQL database, optimizing php performance by employing a php excellerator, speeding up ad delivery by using a content delivery network, and optimizing OpenX’s configuration setting.

Heiko Weber had the honor of closing the seminar with his presentation about scaling OpenX even further, through the use of a multi-server cluster, MySQL replication and OpenX’s distributed statistics mechanism.

Overall, it was a very interesting seminar, with lots of opportunities to meet publishers, OpenX representatives and fellow consultants. I shot a few photos of the event.

I’d like to thank Anna Skorupa for organizing a very smooth and enjoyable event. And thanks to Simon Bailey, for explaining about the OpenX marketplace at this seminar but also over dinner the night before.

It was fun meeting fellow OpenX community consultants Heiko Weber and Tobias Schwarz in person. We have worked together before but never had the opportunity to shake hands. And it was also the first time I met Niels Leenheer in person, even though we live only a few minutes away from each other.

There are plans for more seminars, the next one is likely to be held in Los Angeles (I may not be able to attend that one). Visit the OpenX blog to stay up to date about this, or to view their trip report about this seminar.

Update: the next OpenX community event is in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, on Thursday, November 13, 2008.

The OpenX weblog today posted a message about my community contributions. It was in response to the fact that it is exactly 4 years ago that I joined the OpenX community forum, and also that I recently posted my 2000th reply on that forum. Apparently, that event did not go unnoticed. The blog post also mentions my recent step to become a full time consultant, which was possible in a major way to the OpenX related projects I frequently do.

I’m very proud about this recognition of my work in the OpenX community and the comments by a key OpenX people that appeared on the blog.