Free Open Source Tools
Oct 19th, 2008 | By Kevin | Category: Featured Posts, trafficIf you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed with Feedburner. Thanks for visiting!
After several hours clean out our storage unit and garage at the Murray house, I am finally back home and online reasearching a few new tools to test out this week. The first is not really new, just a major upgrade from what I have been using.
Lately, you have been reading about how I have been using OpenX Ad Server to serve ads on my blog and other websites. Well tonight, I finally took the plunge and downloaded the latest release after watching a video up on YouTube form their CEO highlighting some of the latest features included in 2.6.2.
I am really excited to check out the new dashboard with customizable widgets. I am also very interested in taking a deeper look inside the new API that is available to interact with the ad server outside of the OpenX application. With the addition of the API, this opens an opportunity to use the ad server with your affiliate program and even create your open high-end affiliate center.
The new install package for OpenX is huge, over 4100 files. I have been waiting to see a Fantastico update that includes the package but finally gave up and I’m installing it old skool myself. Rather than upgrade my existing installation, I have decided to do a fresh installation.
The second tool I heard about today up on YouTube from a SearchEngineWorld news video is called PiWik. PiWik is an alternative to Google Analytics. On several occasions at different seminars, several of the extremely successful marketers were not very keen on using Google Analytics. Their paranoia is that Google would know how profitable their campaigns actually are rachet up their bid prices taking away profits. I don’t quite agree with them yet.
I took a look at the online demo of PiWik, and I would say it is no Google Analytics. There are many similar features and the core analytics are there, but the interface is not my favorite. They have a partnership with OpenX, and like OpenX have their own set of APIs to work with the data.
One thing I did like even though it was kind of formatted off kilter in my browser was the heatmap of clicks on different pages. This reminded me of the third tool in today’s post, ClickHeat.
ClickHeat is a heatmap tool showing where on your page the visitors have clicked. This is much like a service I used to pay for from CrazyEgg.com as recommended by John Reese. If you are getting enough traffic, a heatmap can give you some interesting statistics in a visual layout.
My focus this week will be the latest version of OpenX, I will probably look at the other two again next week.
Well, I an now at 1700 files uploaded for OpenX, still a lot to go.
Watch for a new video on the latest version of OpenX soon.
Kevin
Originally from Wisconsin, I moved out to Salt Lake City over ten years ago on a six month software development contract. I now have over 15 years in software development, and was introduced to internet marketing back in 2003. During the wild west days, our business focused on content sites for Adsense revenue. As it became harder and harder to keep up with the search engines, our business has evolved, and forced us to focus on building lists and creating products. We now have a list of about 5000 interested in goal setting, and a small internet marketing list of about 500.
Hi Kevin,
Thanks for sharirng the open source tools . Also, please keep us updated on your Openx adserver results. This looks like a winner. Keep up the great work…
Have a Freat Day!
Robby LeBlanc
Hi Kevin
We’re creating a hosted version of OpenX for those who don’t want to install and maintain themselves. Right now we’re looking for more beta testers, sign-up here if you’d like to try OpenX Hosted:
http://www.openx.org/hosted
cheers, Oliver
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