We have always encouraged independent consultants to provide paid services to the OpenX community - it’s an important part of the support ecosystem. Today we’re launching the OpenX consultant directory which we hope will help connect consultants with the OpenX community.
How does it work?
The OpenX consulting directory provides a categorised list of consultants who provide services which may be useful to people using OpenX’s software or services. Using the directory you can easily request support from a consultant of your choice.
Are you looking for paid support?
Visit our consultant directory to find a consultant that suits you.
Would you like to be listed as a consultant?
Find out more and register here if you would like to be included in the independent consulting directory.
This is a new service that we’re excited to launch and expect to develop further. Please send us your feedback. We hope you find the new consulting directory useful!
We would like to invite everyone to join us for the next OpenX event which will take place on 14th of August (UPDATED: see below) in the Pasadena area of Los Angeles, California. It’s a free event open to anyone interested in finding out more about OpenX.
Based on the success of the last event in Germany, we’re going to choose the topics we cover based on the suggestions offered by people who register. This means you can ensure this event is useful for you!
If you’re based in or around LA we’d love to see you there.
We’re excited to announce that the new version of the OpenX ad server has arrived.
OpenX 2.6 builds on our existing open source ad server to offer some great new features to help you take control of the advertising on your websites and make more money online, including:
OpenX API - Save time by automating common tasks and linking OpenX with other systems.
Faster ad tag - Deliver ads faster and reduce your server load using the single page call ad tag.
And that’s just the start! You’ll also find new ad targeting options, UI improvements and much, much more.
The new release has already been fully translated into 11 languages by OpenX community, including Brazilian Portuguese, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Polish, Romanian, Russian, Simplified Chinese, Slovenian and Spanish, with more translations on the way.
This has been a huge community effort and we’re thrilled to have your support to make this possible. Our thanks go out to the hundreds of community members who helped develop new features, resolve bugs and get this release ready for launch today.
The OpenX team has released a security update to our open source ad server. We strongly encourage all users to upgrade to avoid this issue.
This release (v2.4.8) resolves a vulnerability in the delivery system. In addition, this release includes 13 bug fixes and enhancements relating to password recovery, tracker invocation tags and geotargeting.
The new release of OpenX includes an exciting new feature which promises to save online advertisers lots of time and money: the OpenX API. The new OpenX API gives developers a way to control the ad server so they can automate common tasks and integrate with other applications in a stable and reliable way.
Here’s a quick FAQ that introduces the new OpenX API, describes the key features and explains how it can help you integrate the OpenX ad server into your overall business.
What is the OpenX API?
The OpenX API is a web service. It provides an interface for other applications to control entities like advertisers, campaigns, banners, websites and zones on your ad server.
How can it make my life easier?
With a little TLC, the API can be used to streamline your business processes and automate some of the more mundane tasks to reduce the possibility of “pilot error”. Copying and pasting from one system into another is inherently error-prone, and use of the API could free up your staff to engage in more productive pursuits.
What kind of things can I do with it?
There are lots of different things the OpenX API can do to help make your systems interoperate better. Here are just a few examples:
The OpenX API can be used to integrate your ad server with an existing sales tool, so that when you book a sale, the campaign details are automatically set up in your OpenX installation, without human intervention. You can also link your billing system to pull down statistics and billing information directly from the ad server on demand.
Some publishers have begun to streamline data entry processes using the API, e.g. creating a simple banner upload web-form to automatically upload banners into their OpenX system.
The more geeky users out there have already been experimenting with building interfaces into the OpenX API from other languages. We’ve provided helper libraries and example code in PHP and Java. Python and Ruby clients are already in development by community members.
Does the OpenX API give me complete control of the ad server?
We’ve chosen the most important attributes for this first release, which provides the basic functionality required by most publishers. We expect to expand the functionality in upcoming releases.
That’s all very cool, where can I get more detailed (technical) information?
We’ve written a step-by-step OpenX API tutorial with worked examples for using the API from both a PHP and a Java client which takes you through the basics of connecting to and sending commands to the OpenX API.
We also have auto-generated OpenX API interface specification. This is an intimidating document, but it does accurately describe all the classes, variables and methods which the OpenX API provides access too which makes it an invaluable tool for virgin developers. By way of example, the class associated with the Campaign object is called CampaignServiceImpl.
The new release of OpenX (currently in beta) introduces a new feature, single page call, to serve ads faster. If your websites include more than one ad on each page, then upgrading to OpenX 2.6 will deliver ads faster and reduce the load on your server!
The new ad tag makes one request to the ad server to fetch all the banners needed for the page, hence the feature’s name. This is the reason for the performance boost, too: three individual ad requests puts more strain on the server than one combined request.
Although this new feature also allows the server to perform functions such as companion positioning by combining ad requests together, this useful new feature primarily provides better ad serving performance.
One clear message from the recent OpenX Community Survey was that we need to do more to make the ad server simpler to use. Addressing this has become a key focus for us, and in coming releases you will see the results of this ongoing work.
The OpenX ad server, with its broad range of features, is used by publishers in many different ways. We’re focusing on three key areas to simplify the product so that those features are much easier to use:
Make OpenX simpler to learn and use
Streamline workflow for common tasks
Remove the need to install and maintain an ad server
Under the hood… a new UI framework
Making OpenX easier to use and streamlining the workflow hinges on improving the user interface - a UI that was designed 8 years ago!
To make these big changes we first had to improve the UI framework. We’ve developed a new system that will allow developers and administrators to control the user interface. For example, features that aren’t being used could be hidden, and new functionality added.
OpenX 2.7 will make these features available through the new plugin framework. Please register to help us develop these features.
UI improvements in the new version of OpenX
With the release of OpenX 2.6 (currently in beta) you will see the first round of UI improvements. Some of these are intended to make OpenX more intuitive, and we’ve updated terminology and reworked pages to make the administrative interface simpler and more logical. Other improvements will make it easier to navigate around the application and perform common tasks more quickly.
Probably the most visible change will be the new OpenX dashboard. This is a new concept suggested by the community: a place where you can see, at a glance, key statistics about your ad server. Although the dashboard is still in its first phase, future releases will build on its framework to enable users to add widgets and further customise it to meet their needs.
A hosted version of OpenX
We know that many publishers who use OpenX to serve ads would prefer not to maintain an ad server. So, as part of our effort to make OpenX simpler to use we decided to provide a hosted version of OpenX. We announced the hosted beta programme earlier this year, and we’re excited about the hundreds of publishers who are already participating. We’re continually working to expand the programme by including more publishers. Please let us know if you would like to participate, too.
This is a work in progress - keep sending in your suggestions
We’re still working hard to make OpenX as simple as possible. We want to save you time so you can focus on optimising your inventory, display more relevant ads and maximize your ad revenue. In the next few releases of OpenX you will see more and more of our work in this area. We’ve had some great contributions from the community and many suggestions have already been implemented. Please keep sending in your suggestions or join the OpenX feedback group and help us make OpenX simpler and easier to use.
The complete translation of the 2.5 beta into 11 languages has been contributed by our community. We have had many volunteers step up and accept the challenge of translating it into their native tongues. They turned out to be the right people for the job too! We all owe them our thanks for their fantastic work!
Please meet:
Aby, Daniel, Ernesto (Spanish)
Benjy (French)
Heiko (German)
Max, Damir (Russian)
Rafael, Paulo (Brazilian Portuguese)
Ling, Scourgen (Chinese Simplified)
Luca, Pierluigi (Italian)
Aleš (Slovenian)
Marius (Romanian)
Norio, Tomoaki, Kenji (Japanese)
Krzysztof (Polish)
These guys refused to get intimidated by the massive number of words (over 9,000!) and sped through the task. The award for the fastest translator would have to go to Marius and Aleš who had to start from scratch yet progressed at incredible pace, sometimes reaching 20% a day. Then there are those like Norio, Luca and Pierluigi who mysteriously committed translations at some extraordinary hours, and those who got involved last minute, like Daniel, Ernesto and Paulo, yet gave it all they had. Finally, our thanks go to those who have been part of the translation team for a long time and who we can always rely on: Aby, Benjy, Heiko, Max, Rafael, Ling, Scourgen, and Krzysztof. Well done guys!
Special thanks to all of those translators who have put in so much effort to complete these language updates. They worked hard to make it happen and we hope you will benefit from this.
And we have more good stuff to come your way! More and more volunteers get involved into our localisation project. We have volunteers working on Lithuanian, Danish, Hungarian, Indonesian, Arabic and many more. If you feel you want to join and contribute please register here and we will get in touch.
The new version of OpenX introduces some major enhancements to user management, including more fine grained control of individual user permissions and logging of trafficking changes.
These new features will be of particular interest if you more than one person logs into your ad server. For example:
Website owners, who may let advertisers log to see live statistics, and
Networks and agencies, who may have many people involved in trafficking.
In previous versions of OpenX, the management of users and accounts system was simple and effective so long as it fitted well with your needs, but this was restrictive. An Advertiser or Publisher (website owner) could be given access to login to the ad server to and view reports and statistics. All trafficking was done by the administrator or special “Agency” level accounts.
This presented some challenges. It was often necessary to have multiple people sharing the same username and password in order to access the system since login credentials were associated with a specific account including the Administrator account, as well as each Agency, Advertiser or Publisher account.
We have implemented a more sophisticated user permissions system in order to provide a hosted version of OpenX, and we’re excited to be able to share the results of this work as part of the new version of our open source ad server (currently in beta).
Introducing the new OpenX user management system…
The new features are the introduction of user and accounts, with a permissions system to give users specific permissions to control advertisers or websites as well as a complete audit trail of all trafficking changes.
1. Give each individual user their own login details
This is the first and most obvious change to the system, by giving each user their own login details we’ve made the permissions system act much more like a traditional user management system. This also means that all trafficking actions can be logged against the user who made the change rather than a shared account.
2. Control what each user account can see and do
The new user accounts are more flexible because permissions are no longer directly associated with a single advertiser or publisher. This means you can give a trafficker access to control many websites and advertisers (called a Manager Account) while giving other users more restricted permissions.
3. Set specific permissions on a user account basis
The new system gives better control over permissions to create, modify and update actions by setting these properties for each user account individually.
4. View the history of configuration changes
The new auditing system lets you see a history of all configuration changes which will be a great help in troubleshooting delivery problems back to the cause.
5. Switch between ‘accounts’
Users can switch between the different accounts they are associated with. This affects what they see on the administrative interface, for example switching to the Administrator Account to make global configuration changes and then back to a Manager Account to perform trafficking tasks.
We think these new features will be of great interest to anyone who delegates trafficking campaigns, giving them more control over their ad server. You can find out more about the new user management tools in the user and administrator guides.
Tags: 
![](http://blog.openx.org/wp-content/uploads/account-myaccount.png "New \\"My Account\\" tab")
