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OIO v3 Mind Map

Instead of writing a dreary specification document for you to sift through, I’ve put together a 1st draft of all your ideas and suggestions in the form of a mind map. Enjoy!

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

More flexible ad zone output

I’ve been asked on a few occasions during the ideas brainstorm for v3 about being able to display ad zones using different settings to those used in the admin area. For example, I have an ad zone using 125×125 ads, but on one of my sites I want to show the same ad zone using dimensions of 90×90.

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.

OIOpublisher 2.21 Released

I thought I’d release a small update package to include a couple of things you may find useful. You can now download v2.21 from the site, which includes:

(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!

Wordpress Theme Integration

This is one thing that I’m often asked about – how do you integrate the OIO purchase process with your Wordpress theme? Well, now it’s very easy!

>> 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.

OIO and WP-super-cache

This is the second post in a series that looks at potential problems that OIO can have with other well-known Wordpress plugins. You can see the entire series here.

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.