Book Image

OpenX Ad Server: Beginner's Guide

By : Murat Yilmaz
Book Image

OpenX Ad Server: Beginner's Guide

By: Murat Yilmaz

Overview of this book

<p>OpenX is the world's leading independent ad server and it provides you with the simple tools you need to make money from advertising. Although OpenX is a fast, robust ad serving solution to power all of your digital advertising, it can be challenging to get beyond the basics and build an advertising system that meets your needs perfectly.<br /><br />This practical guide gives you a hands-on experience on using OpenX Ad Server, helping you develop feature-rich and professional advertising solutions for web sites with world-class ad serving functionality. The book explores the powers of OpenX Ad Server and provides you with impressive ad server solutions.<br /><br />OpenX Ad Server Beginner's Guide will help you gain control over all the advertising needs of your blogs and web sites on a centralized ad-serving platform, for much easier management than traditional with methods. You will be able to run your own ads and sell your ad space to advertisers at the same time. You will learn how to serve ads according to origin of the visitors using GeoTargeting features. Combined with OpenX Channels, you will maximize your online revenue with relevant ads. This book also tells you how you can integrate other popular Ad networks like Google AdSense, Amazon and so on. Using OpenX for multiple accounts, tracking the success of ad campaigns using statistics, and reports are also discussed in detail.</p>
Table of Contents (16 chapters)
OpenX Ad Server: Beginner's Guide
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewers
Preface

System requirements


While the book is being written, the latest OpenX release is 2.8.3, and the system requirements are valid for this version. Previous versions may have the same or fewer requirements.

We must download and install OpenX Ad Server on our own or on a shared web hosting solution. OpenX system runs on an Apache web server running with Linux. We will also need PHP and one of the supported database servers: MySQL or PostgreSQL. MySQL is the preferred database server as it is easier to manage and work more efficiently with OpenX. Some users suggested running OpenX on a Windows server with a PHP-enabled mode, but as it is not officially supported by OpenX and open to errors, we suggest following an ideal LAMP solution (Linux, Apache, MySql, and PHP). The following table shows the requirements list for installing OpenX:

Linux

Linux is essential and standard to work with OpenX Ad Server. Some other Unix-based systems can also run OpenX Ad Server but are not supported officially.

Apache server

An Apache server is required. The majority of modern web hosting solutions have the latest versions of Apache server, so it is not an issue.

PHP

As OpenX Ad Server is written in PHP language, it needs PHP installation.

Although PHP version 5.2 or newer is recommended, 5.1.4 version or any greater version is also supported.

PHP settings and parameters

OpenX uses default PHP server settings, but as some server administrators change these settings, it is wise to check whether the following parameters are set before the installation process:

  • memory_limit

    Minimum 128 MB at the root settings is required for 2.8.3 version. This is a must for OpenX installation and operation. Write to your web server technical support to be sure, as not many web hosts can provide this requirement as a default.

  • magic_quotes_runtime

    Off.

  • safe_mode

    Off.

  • register_argc_argv

    Must be on if you want to run maintenance via command line.

  • file_uploads

    Needs to be turned on to allow HTTP file uploads.

  • mysql, ZLib, FTP, GD, openSSL extensions

    These extensions are needed for several functions to operate correctly.

MySQL

It is the default OpenX Ad Server database. Although MySQL 5.0 is recommended,. MySQL 4.1 and greater versions are also supported

SMTP Server

Required for sending reports by e-mail.