What is Openx
OpenX is, in my opinion, the most efficient and hands-free open source ad server on the web today. It’s flexible, easy to use, and best of all, free.
What is WordPress
WordPress is one of the leading platforms in blogging on the web today. Whether you are self-hosted (using wordpress.org) or being hosted on Automattic servers (using wordpress.com), WordPress is an amazing blogging platform which makes blogging easy and fun.
This OpenX and WordPress tutorial will outline how to more effectively use the targeting features of OpenX utilizing the built-in features of WordPress. It will explain how to do this by using WordPress tags and OpenX source parameters, both built-in features to WordPress and OpenX, respectively.
OpenX Solution Used: Hosted OpenX (http://hosted.openx.org/)
WordPress Version: 2.6.2
For this tutorial, I will be using tags are the “source” for OpenX.
Step 1: Setup tags so OpenX can view them as a “source.”
<?php
while ( have_posts() ) : the_post();
$fsm_oxtags = get_the_tags();
if ($fsm_oxtags) { foreach ($fsm_oxtags as $tag) {
$taglist .= $tag->name . '|';
}
$taglist = rtrim($taglist, '|');
$oxtags = rawurlencode($taglist);
}
endwhile;
?>
I have these in the top of my single.php file within WordPress. This only creates the variable of $oxtags so it can be echo’d elsewhere.
Details of Step 1: The first bit of code will create the loop. then it will go through each tag and set it as “tag |” because I am using pipes to separate each tag for OpenX. Next, it will trim off the last pipe because it’s not needed, creating something like… “tag 1|tag 2|tag 3|tag 4″ … and like I just mentioned, it will strip off the last pipe. Lastly, it will put that string, “tag 1|tag 2|tag 3|tag 4″ … into a raw encoded URL string which we will be able to echo later in the page. Note: this is only being set at $oxtags so it can be used elsewhere, nothing is echo’d in this part of the script.
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