As you’d expect, it was quite difficult to find any examples (you have to go into the demo and find an active ad), so I’ve added a new tab to the demo that will show users what an advertiser sees when they are sent their weekly statistics email. Enjoy!

>> Ad stats demo link

I’m currently in the process of building a library of re-usable components that will deal with most of the laborious tasks automatically (the backbone of the opensource framework upon which OIO will be built). I did at one point consider using an existing library (Zend Framework, Kohana etc), but as many have found before me it’s not quite the same as doing it yourself.

As a quick example, I’ve most recently been working on an email component, in order to handle different protocols (SMTP, POP3, IMAP) and send / receive mail in any language automatically. Each component can be used independently of others, so as to make them usable in any development situation, but is kept as lightweight as possible.

Once I’ve constructed the final few generic components, I’ll be able to use them to develop the first prototype of OIO v3. As I mentioned previously, I won’t give any timeframes until I can tell you something accurate; otherwise it’s just a guess on my part.

The main features are:

1.) Integrate a standalone installation of OIO with any Wordpress / WPMU blog (if you’ve got OIO installed as a Wordpress plugin, you can ignore this feature).

2.) Type a placeholder such as [% oiopub-banner-1-left %] into any of your Wordpress posts and it will automatically be converted into an OIO ad zone. The example would output banner zone 1 on the left of your post.

3.) Put an ad zone into your RSS feed.

For more information and to download the “addons” plugin, click here.

I recently read an article by Lee Ka Hoong that looked at the benefits of BuySellAds. Lee ended by saying:

I have my own direct advertisers, but why I still want to pay commission to BuySellAds by selling banner ads [is] because I don’t have to do anything and I get advertisers.

It’s a common view-point and one that OIO is unable to fully address at the moment. Yes, this website does contain a marketplace, but it’s not able to channel advertisers through properly yet.

Why aren’t advertisers being channelled effectively through the marketplace?

1.) The link-up between the OIO script and the marketplace isn’t great. The data from individual sites needs to be better accessible from the marketplace to make it useful (ie. searchable ad zone data, pricings, availablility). There is too high a proportion of dead sites or sites that no longer use OIO (resulting in less meaningful searches).

2.) No promotion. Money needs to be spent on the marketplace – I’m sure that a setup such as BuySellAds spends a lot on promotion – rather than just focusing on selling the script. Essentially, a move away from product to product + added value services.

What can be done about it?

Reason #1 is something I can / will deal with during the development of v3 of OIO. Integration of fully fledged web services will mean more available data exchange, as well as more current data.

Reason #2, as mentioned, is about money. Just as other services use the commission they take from each ad sale to promote themselves, OIO would need a way of doing a similar type of thing. Product sales won’t cut it (and ultimately I’m in favour of making the product free), so it falls back to producing a recurring revenue stream.

If publishers like Lee are willing to pay 25% commission to ensure a stream of advertisers, then it stands to reason that they would be willing to pay a flat monthly fee to help advertise the OIO marketplace (providing it was of sufficient quality, of course). One step closer to the ultimate goal of direct sales and guarenteed advertisers.

This  “communal advertising fund” could then be used to push a stream of advertisers through to sites they are interested in, via the marketplace.

I think I’ll keep it in mind….

After a bit of searching, I found the following comment by a paypal developer:

Apologies for any inconvenience this issue with IPN may have caused you. We are aware of the issue and working it as high priority, to get it resolved as soon as possible.

As a workaround, if you use port 443, rather than port 80, IPN will work.

Once resolved, we will update any threads created for this issue, so that everyone is aware. Thanks for your continued patience!

I therefore did as suggested and added the option to use port 443 (if the server supports it) instead of port 80, which did indeed fix the problem. I’ve also added the same code to the OIO paypal module, since port 443 seems to be the recommended default now.

There’s no urgent need to upgrade, unless this problem persists for a while.

So, if you’re experiencing any problems with paypal IPNs today, now you know why!

>> http://v3.oiopublisher.com/spec/v3-spec-1st-draft/

Up until now, there was no way to accomplish this, since the output functions just used whatever was set in the admin. Whilst this type of thing will be fully resolved in v3, I thought I’d put together some alternative output functions for v2 that could do the same thing.

I haven’t yet released it as part of the official download, since the output is fundamental to everyone who uses OIO and so any bugs could cause quite a few problems for people upgrading. Instead, I’ve released it as a separate package that you can upload, which will over-write the default functions:

>> http://forum.oiopublisher.com/discussion/796/manipulating-ad-zone-output/

The link above contains all the information you should need on how to install and use these new output options. It supports both php and javascript, and won’t affect any of your current ad zones using the old output method.

(1) One-click Wordpress theme integration – you can now use your Wordpress theme with OIO more easily. You can find out more information about it here, as well as a short tutorial on how to use this feature (and what to do i your theme doesn’t look quite right initially).

(2) Use decimals in your pricing – up until now you’ve only been able to use whole numbers when pricing your ads. Now you can set your price to whatever you’d like (eg. $9.95).

How to upgrade

The standard upgrade tutorial applies. If you’ve customised any of the template files, the only one to change since the release of v2.20 is the “templates/core/main.tpl” file.

How’s v3 coming?

Since I get asked this quite a bit, the answer is it’s coming along slowly but surely. I’ll be releasing a spec shortly, including as many of your ideas as possible, so you can see what it will end up like. Remember, there’s still time to submit your own ideas!

>> Rather than try and explain it in words, check out the image below (click it to view full size).

If you want to try it out for yourself, simply download the latest code and over-write all your existing OIO files. There’s no version number change yet, as I’m testing it out with the early adopters first.

PS. the ‘templates/core/main.tpl’ file has changed for this.

Yesterday I had a report of a problem with OIO, which turned out to be caused by wp-super-cache. The file caching meant that OIO stats tracking was being bypassed, since it is done using php by default.

Initially I was going to give my standard reply of “switch over to javascript ad output” (since it isn’t affected by caching plugins, whereas php output is). However, it isn’t a proper solution in my eyes since it means that anyone who uses Wordpress, a caching plugin and OIO might run into a similar issue. That would mean having to give my standard answer again…

Finding another way

It seems that only stats tracking is affected by Wordpress caching plugins for normal use, so I came up with a solution that would still work when using php ad output. The tracking module performs a check for the existence of wp-cache / wp-super-cache and if found, will use an image tag to record stats instead of doing it internally via php. This tag will be cached along with the rest of the page, and so will load even when caching is active.

Ironically, I used to use an image tag by default. However, it caused some server load problems (because it meant OIO had to be loaded twice on each page) and so I stopped using it (an unintended consquence there!). This intermediate solution gives us the best of both worlds, since an image tag will only be used if actually needed.

The latest version of the stats tracker that contains this change (2.07 at the time of writing) can be downloaded here.

Any other problems with caching?

The only other issue that can come up as a result of caching is a lack of ad rotation. If the page html is cached, the ads will remain static until the cache is cleared. If you really want ads to rotate on every page load, and use a Wordpress caching plugin, you  will have to use javascript to show ads with OIO.