Displaying a smaller banner in an Openx zone

nicolas — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 13:35:10 +0000

Did you ever want to chain a zone with smaller banners after a zone with big banners in Openx? This sounds like useful feature. We don’t live in the 90s anymore where every page had a pixel-precise table layout. The world has learned how to build fluid layouts.
One the Advanced page of the admin pages of a zone, there is this If no banners from this zone can be delivered, try to… setting. Openx should really let me decide which zone I want to pick from the Display the selected zone instead list. I want to see all zones in the list.
Yes, there are workarounds, like using *x* sized zones, but why on earth should I create a new zone if I already have one that has exactly the ads I want to display?
Well, here’s how to change it. If you want to have the full choice, edit /www/admin/zone-advanced.php. In version 2.6.3, simply add the following line after line 230:

$allowothersizes = true;

Now, you get the full list in the dropdown.

Here’s a little more context:

--- zone-advanced-orig.php      2009-02-02 07:46:45.000000000 +0100
+++ zone-advanced.php   2009-01-21 15:22:04.000000000 +0100
@@ -228,6 +228,7 @@
     $doZones = OA_Dal::factoryDO('zones');
 
     $allowothersizes = $zone['delivery'] == phpAds_ZoneInterstitial || $zone['delivery'] == phpAds_ZonePopup;
+       $allowothersizes = true;
     if ($zone['width'] != -1 && !$allowothersizes) {
         $doZones->width = $zone['width'];
     }

Kind of funny that this setting exists but isn’t exposed anywhere in the UI… Yes, it’s a quick hack, so test it before running it on anything in production. Works for me though.

Preview Openx geotargeting for different countries

nicolas — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 10:20:55 +0000

Openx is a great open source ad server. If you have more than one website or simply want a flexible system for targeting your ads to the right audience, it’s well worth a look. One of many great features is the built-in Geotargeting plugin.

Of course, after adding local ads to your database, you want to have a look at what the page looks like for a visitor from a different country. It took me some time to figure out a way. But I found a good method for getting a preview for a different country. In openx version 2.6 you can edit the file /plugins/geotargeting/GeoIP/GeoIP.delivery.php at line 141. At the end of the OA_Geo_GeoIP_unpackCookie function, add something like

    if ($_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR'] == 'HERE.IS.YOUR.IP') { // insert your IP
        $aGeoInfo['country_code'] = 'ES'; // insert country code
    }
    return $aGeoInfo;

That’s all, no proxies or messing with your tags or sites required. I hope a similar feature will be added to the plugin sometime in the future. Oh, and I’m not quite sure what would happen if cookies are disabled, but who cares, this is just for testing.

Nicolas Kuttler » advertising

Displaying a smaller banner in an Openx zone

Preview Openx geotargeting for different countries