I’ve done a dozen upgrades from earlier versions to this one over the last few days, and the upgrade process is pretty smooth, since there are no changes in the database structure this time (unless you’re coming from OpenX 2.4). In any event, it’s always a good idea to follow a proven procedure for OpenX upgrades. If you’re interested, I can also do the upgrade for you. Check out my Fixed price upgrade service.

By the way, if you’re still running OpenX 2.4, it had an upgrade too, the most recent version is now 2.4.9, and you can download it from here. It fixes the same security issue.

Update: added link to OpenX blog post announcing this upgrade.

Introducing OpenX single page call

My client hired me to upgrade his ad server system to OpenX version 2.6. The most important reason was that we wanted to start using a new type of invocation code available in this latest OpenX release, single page call. My client’s blog, funded primarily by sponsors, has 35 zones on every page, and this made the pages load rather slowly. Single page call was designed to remedy this, and we were eager to find out how much faster the site would be after this change.

A special consideration was that the site has 23 ‘Platinum Sponsors’ and 10 ‘Gold Sponsors’ and their banners must rotate in the spots available for these two types of sponsors. Before the upgrade the site used direct selection, but this required periodic manual reshuffling of the page so that each sponsor would show up at the top of the pages from time to time. Using the zones on a website would automatically randomize the delivery of the 23 Platinum sponsor ads over the 23 Platinum zones (and the same for Gold sponsors).

After the upgrade, we implemented singe page call code in the the site’s template. The OpenX documentation has some details on how to do this. And the OpenX software will generate all the code for it on the fly, so it’s just as simple as the traditional types of invocation code that have been available for years.

Advanced use of single page call: ‘Named Zones’

We wanted to make it very simple and quick to add a new sponsor to the site. That’s why I decided to have only a one zone for Platinum sponsors and another zone for Gold sponsors and repeat those zones just as many times as there are sponsors for each category. The “Named Zones” feature allowed me to create multiple instances of the same zone on a single page, while still making sure that these named zones behave as if they’re separate zones. Adding a new sponsor to the inventory is now as simple as adding an advertiser and a campaign, linking that campaign to right zone, and adding an additional instance of that zone in the blog’s theme.

Impressive results

After placing the invocation in the WordPress theme that drives the look of the blog, we tested the site and were pleasantly surprised that loading the page was 5 to 10 times faster than before. A load time of 12 seconds during the busy hours of the day was reduced to just under 2 seconds. And at night the site even loads in under 1 second.

Another advantage of single page call is that it results in a drastic reduction of the load on the ad server, since every page impression causes only one request to the ad server. This request returns all the ads for the page and all that remains is a request for the image files and beacon pixels to log ad impressions. In contrast, before using single page call, each of the 35 zones would contact the ad server in sequence and force the delivery engine to wake up, decide what ad to show and return that result. A single request for 35 ads proves to be much faster than 35 requests for just one ad. See for yourself by visiting the site at HIStalk2.com.

Conclusion

Using the new single page call in OpenX 2.6 could be a very simple to implement but very effective method to make your site load faster while reducing the load on your ad server at the same time.

It would be my pleasure to assist anyone looking for similar results. Just contact me if you would like to hire me for your project.

Update September 24: added link to client site, changed wording in two sentences to clarify.

I downloaded and installed Chrome and tried it out on a few sites and applications I use a lot. One of them, of course, is OpenX, and it works fine there. What I like is that you can create a so called ‘application short cut’ that sits as an icon on your desktop. When you click that icon, the browser opens with almost no clutter, so you get maximum work space for the application.

I’ve been testing the OpenX 2.6 management interface through Google Chrome, and so far, everything I’ve looked at works as you would expect. I’ve also been looking at a few of my sites and the ads on them that are delivered using OpenX. Again, no surprises, every ad appears just at is would in the other major browsers.

Google Chrome starts very fast and it seems to load pages just as fast or faster than other browsers I’ve worked with. But then again, most browsers are very fast when you’ve just installed them. A nice little extra in Chrome is the fact that any text editing box (like the one here on my blog where I’m typing this text) can be resized with the mouse, so that you get a little bit more room to type and edit.

I’ve been using Google Chrome for a day now and I’m very impressed. Microsoft’s Internet Explorer and Mozilla’s Firefox (my current favorite) probably have a very strong new competitor.

Starting today, I’m offering a fixed price OpenX 2.6 Upgrade Service. I’ve been doing upgrades for a long time now, but with the demand for this service increasing, I decided it was time to put together a complete description of what I do when performing an upgrade, what the conditions are, and how the procedure works in detail.

There are many exciting new features in OpenX version 2.6, too many to mention them all in a single blog post. But I have to mention the new Single Page Call feature that will help webmasters everywhere keep their pages loading fast even with many ads on them. I’m also very excited about the API that’s part of this release. I believe this is going to be very good for third party developers who want to create additional functionality without having to modify the OpenX core. And a very important new set of features is about managing users and permissions.

Please join me in congratulating everyone at OpenX with this new release.

Update: I’ve put together a ‘recipe’ for upgrading your OpenX to this newest version.

I upgraded a few of the OpenX instances I operated yesterday without any problems. According to the issue tracker this new beta has fixes for 29 bugs (many of them have to do with translations, obviously).

It seems this 2.5 beta is getting closer and closer to stability and the OpenX team have said repeatedly that they’ll release it as 2.6 as soon as it’s stable. I’m looking forward to that.

A personal note: I do not recommend using beta software on production websites, unless you know exactly what you’re doing, or are prepared to deal with the inherent risks of using beta grade software on a live website.

Upgrading is essentially a four step process:

1. Upload program files for new version in a separate folder
2. Copy configuration file, copy banner images and set folder permissions
3. Backup the database
4. Rename folders and run the upgrade procedure

I’ll discuss these steps in more detail in the remainder of this article.

In version 2.0 each campaign would have received 50% and then the two banners of the second campaign would each split that 50% to get 25% of the probability.

But in OpenX 2.4 things are a little different. The picture below illustrates this: the campaign with two banners grabs 66,66% of the total probability, and the campaign with one banner gets the remaining 33,33%.

There is a way to get around this, and it requires only a little change in the way campaigns are defined. It all has to do with campaign weight. To continue with the example above, the campaign that has 2 banners must be given a lower weight to reflect there are more banners in it. Most people use the default weight that OpenX assigns to a campaign, but you can change that manually.

Here’s the recipe: give each campaign a weight of 100 to start with, but then adjust the campaign weight when you add more banners to it. If it’s a campaign with two banners, change the campaign weight to 50, or if the campaign has 4 banners, change the campaign weight to 25. Then when you go back to the probability screen the two campaigns are linked to, you’ll notice that the probabilities there have also changed, as can be seen in this image.

(This tip applies to OpenX 2.4.x and was initially written on June 25, 2008)