Tags: Over the last few months, we have spent time sorting through all of the opportunities, features, and priorities that we have, and distilling these down to a clear roadmap of what OpenX plans to deliver in the coming months. It took a lot of time to deliver a simple result.
Here are the priorities for OpenX in 2008:
Stability
Our current version of OpenX, v2.4, is the first stable release since the release of phpAdsNew in 2002. Almost everything (except the interface!) has changed. We need to work on making the core OpenX server as stable as ever. We currently have about 120 outstanding bugs, and more unverified bugs from the forums that we are making a top priority to get resolved. (UPDATE: v2.4 has around 25 outstanding bugs, and the remainder are bugs for v2.5 beta)
Simplicity
Over the years, we have added many new features to an already full-featured product. We are working on moving many of the more ‘expert’ features to be optional plug-ins (check out the ‘Integration’ section below), as well as modifying the user interface and workflow to be as simple and efficient as possible. Our efforts simplifying (or eliminating) installation or upgrade fall into this category as well.
Integration
There are many people who leverage OpenX by customizing the code to work within their other systems (e.g. CMS, CRM, Financial, etc.). The problem with customizing the core code is that upgrading OpenX becomes harder when new versions are released. We have identified features which will make integration and customization of OpenX easier, including a Web Services API, Plugin Framework, and Template System.
The goal here is to make it very simple for anyone to create modifications to OpenX - and to donate their work back to the OpenX community!
Efficiency
Over the last few years, we have successfully scaled OpenX to serve many billions of ads per month. However, the infrastructure required to do this is quite complicated. We want to decrease the resources (servers, disk space, etc.) required to serve large ad volumes, as well as simplify the infrastructure needed in order to scale to huge volumes.
Why are these things important to us?
We would like to prepare OpenX for the next level - to make a solid foundation for the OpenX community to build upon. We will then become the platform for publishers, big and small, with simple or sophisticated needs, to use to manage their online advertising.
Please let us know if we are on the right track. Stay tuned for more specifics on features.
Hi,
How serious are these bugs?
Is the core services stable?
-Dash Chang
The New Economics of Advertising
http://adEcon101.blogspot.com/
Do you also have timings available on the roadmap?
We are in the process of putting the roadmap into our issue tracking system. This will then publish timings of the specific features tied to each major goal. This should be done this month.
Scott
Thanks for being honest in the post, but 120 bugs is a lot for saying that 2.4 is stable. That scares me away from wanting to use it and switch to Google’s Ad Manager. You made great points against Ad Manager and I really, really want to use you all but if OpenX is not stable it is hard to switch. =(
David,
Per my comment below - the 120 number is for v2.4 stable AND v2.5 beta. I updated the posting to reflect this.
Cheers,
Scott
Sorry about the confusion. I am not yet an expert with our new bug tracking system. The 120 bugs were for both 2.4 stable AND 2.5 beta. It looks like 2.4 has about 25 bugs, and 2.5 beta has the remainder.
I will add a note to the blog post.
Scott
Are any of the 25 bugs mission critical and/or cause system failure or are they smaller issues? Is there a publicly viewable list of the v2.4 bugs?
The bug tracker can be found at http://developer.openx.org/jira.
Here’s a permalink to the bug report which shows the issues in v2.4
Lots of issues deal with language or UI problems - which do not affect ad delivery or system installation or upgrading. Of course this list is fluid, and issues will be ticked off the list (or added!) over time.
Scott,
Real quick - the first link does not work ‘coz of the ‘.’ included in the link at the end.
-jp
Hi,
I’m sad to say that OpenX would be perfect for our website, but we can’t get the install to work because of one of those “120 bugs” - specifically the blank screen problem that comes with setting up the database. I’ve been through all of the support forums and the conclusion seems to be, “We’ll fix that sometime in the future.” I’ll check back for future updates … hopefully you can get this worked out!
I am sorry to hear this. If there is an issue which provides a ‘blank screen’ during installation, I assure you that the priority would be higher than ’sometime in the future’. I encourage you to log into the forums and add your issue, so that we can fix it properly.
Cheers,
Scott
Has anything changed with phpAdsNew/MaxMediaManager/OpenAds/OpenX other than the name in the past two years? Already on 4.0 the product name seems to be updated more than the software.
Erock,
We have been sitting around just thinking of names for the last two years - that’s it
Actually, the entire application - except the most visible part, the UI - has been rewritten in the past two years, so that the application is easier to modify. OpenX seamlessly integrates into many different environments (Doubleclick, Atlas, Google Adsense, etc.), delivers complex ad campaigns more smoothly, delivers ads much faster, etc.
It is now a solid base onto which we (both OpenX and the OpenX community) can add tons of new features easily.
If I went through our list of features, it would count in the hundreds.
Scott
What I am still missing is the dropped support for PostgreSQL. It seems to me that a PostgreSQL Version will be more and more unlikely. It has been shiftet some times, so that I am afraid I am stuck to phpPgAds for the next years. Pity that.
Is there a REAL point when there will be a PostgreSQL version again?
Best regards,
Holger Mitterwald
Hi Holger
We’ve been working on a Data Abstraction Layer so that we can more easily support different types of databases. I think you’ll be please to hear that we’re currently working on adding PostgreSQL support and expect to it in the next stable release.
cheers, Oliver
Hi Oliver,
is there a timeline available when this new stable version will be released?
Best regards,
Holger
We have good experience with OpenX, helped us a lot in running our own ads without extra cost.
But popularity of rich media ads is growing fast – expendable Flash banners, streaming videos and similar. For now OpenX support only ‘old’ style floating ads. This is our major problem at the moment, as we have to use layers and scripting tricks to server rich ads. This could soon be big issue and make us switch to different ad system. And range of new type of rich ads is growing every day…
Is there any news on building support for expandable Flash and video streaming ads?
Regards,
Dean
[...] week well meaning company blogger/marketer Scott Switzer posted about OpenX’s priorities in 2008. These include stability, simplicity, integration and [...]
Hi Scott, there is an ETA for the 2.5 release?
Thanks,
Sandro,
The beta version (v2.5) is going to be released REALLY soon (a couple of days). We will continue to make bug fix releases available in our stable version (v2.4), and a new release from this version will be available in a week or two.
Cheers,
Scott
Great, so I’ll wait for it, thanks for your quick answer,
Sandro.
Good stuff.
Am eagerly awaiting the road map schedule. I agree that Google has too much power when it comes to ad server, especially with its Ad Manager. Open X needs to act as a counter balance. Am behind it 100%
Scott, I think your openness with about bugs has really confused people. It’s funny to see people who are concerned about the stability of openx when they probably are serving
1 Feature that is sorely lacking is the ability to centrally change the name of the php script pages that server ads. The reason this feature is needed: If an Ad Blocker includes the script name in their filter there is no easy way around getting your adds back to the end user, other than modifying the Ad server build.
Hi Chuck,
Since v2.4, the delivery file names do not have the word ‘ad’ in them, and we have made the file names configurable. You do not need to edit source code to perform this. Basically, you need to: a) Rename the appropriate delivery files (e.g. ajs.php, ck.php, lg.php), and then change the names in the config file.
Good luck,
Scott
Is there any news on building support for expandable Flash ads?
Regards,
Dean
What about a billing integration. If I use openX for aggregating Google and/or Yahoo ads, it is fine. But if I want to use openX to allow third party advertisers to sell on my website, I need a billing system integrated with openX.
I spent few hours in the forum to check what was the status of this feature. I can see that this is someting people are requesting, but this doesn’t seem to be in your roadmap. Is there any other “valuable” solution that can be used to achieve such a goal or do I need to wait for this feature in a fortcoming release.
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