Ask HN: Open Source Adserver? is it time we fork openx? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Open Source Adserver? is it time we fork openx?

6 pointskyriakos8 comments

I've been using various versions of OpenX since the days of phpMyAdsNew but it appears that lately the company behind it became too entangled in their own hosted version and their enterprise advertising deals and has left the community edition behind. There are some huge bugs that make the self-hosted edition practically unusable and they don't seem to be fixing them. Do you know of any alternative projects that are stable and can do the same job (even if lacking some features)? Or maybe its time we start a fork of openx or start fresh with an adserver for this century?

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That's my thoughts exactly. Many of the bugs come from layer upon layer of changes with insufficient understanding of what has gone before. I generated a XRef of the source code and it's a bit of a mess in there. Also OpenX PLC claim copyright on code that existed before they did which is against the spirit of the GPL. I have a copy of the code on GitHub (Open Ad Server) and will be using some automated tools to tackle the more obvious re-factoring.

Feel free to fork it.

Apply for DART for Small Business. It's Free, and when/if you get big the transfer to the premium version will be easy.

But I think you're free up to a few millions of impressions. (Will also save you hosting costs). http://www.google.com/dfp/info/sb/index.html

I went down this path a few weeks ago when I needed it for my own single-user site.

In the end, I decided to run a tiny adserver with Redis and use Google analytics events/clicks tracking to handle the analysis side.

I am not sure exactly what the problem is. I keep running into bugs, bugs that are so obvious that shows that they make zero testing on the open source release. There is no usable code documentation and they no longer have a forum.

I'm testing adzerk now, its a hosted solution free for 1mil impressions per month. So far so good but time will tell.

adzerk huh? I like their solution, but I always get wary when I need to call in for a price.

Any clue on what they charge?

I'm a developer at Adzerk. It's totally free for the first 100M impressions per month. We ask that you call if you're larger than that so we can tailor a plan for you. We generate revenue by selling enterprise deals (larger than 100M) or by app installs from our Marketplace.

100M is actually a lot of traffic, if any of my projects had that much traffic i'd be feeling that whoever serves my banners deserves to earn money from me.

Lord, yes!

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