Andertoons 2.0 – Andertoons Cartoon Blog

Andertoons 2.0 – This Time It’s PostgreSQL

April 10, 2007December 12, 2009 andertoons2 Comments

One of the big changes we made in the new Andertoons.com was changing from a MySQL database to a PostgreSQL database.

An enterprise class database, PostgreSQL boasts sophisticated features such as Multi-Version Concurrency Control (MVCC), point in time recovery, tablespaces, asynchronous replication, nested transactions (savepoints), online/hot backups, a sophisticated query planner/optimizer, and write ahead logging for fault tolerance. It supports international character sets, multibyte character encodings, Unicode, and it is locale-aware for sorting, case-sensitivity, and formatting. It is highly scalable both in the sheer quantity of data it can manage and in the number of concurrent users it can accommodate. There are active PostgreSQL systems in production environments that manage in excess of 4 terabytes of data.

Yeah, I don’t understand it either, but if you go by their logos alone…

Mysql

…I’d bet an elephant could kick a dolphin’s ass any day of the week. So that’s good.

Enjoy!

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Andertoons 2.0 – New Filemaker Database

March 23, 2007December 12, 2009 andertoons2 Comments

I love Filemaker.

I think the common conception of the artist is one surrounded by various piles of slovenly creativity.

Not me. I’m a neat freak. (OK, I leave dirty clothes next to the hamper in my bedroom, but that’s another blog…) I revel in being able to take gobs of information and organize it into tables and layouts and such.

So getting to design a new Filemaker database to match the data structure of the new Andertoons? Heaven.

Here’s my old FM layout (click to enlarge):

Not too bad for my first try, and it served me well for years.

But here’s my new digs (again, click to enlarge):

Oh yeah… That’s nice!

With Fliemaker 8.5, I can now pull the thumbnail from my site and see it live in the database instead of adding thousands of JPEGs to the database itself.

And each tag now has its own entry, instead of being a single field filled with comma-separated keywords. (Notice how they alphabetize themselves? JOY!)

I’ve also added some new buttons for myself at the top and side to speed repetitive tasks.

Everything I need at a glance. And fun little icons to boot!

I’m such a nerd.

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Andertoons 2.0 – FAQ/Help

March 18, 2007December 12, 2009 andertoons

One of the banes of running a popular site are the ever-arriving “something’s not working” or “where’s the thing where I do that” emails.

Don’t get me wrong, if there’s a real problem with the site or a customer’s order, I want to know about it so I can fix it ASAP. But often times, it’s a really simple misunderstanding or question that can be answered by an FAQ/Help page.

The old Andertoons had a FAQ page, but it had become bloated and there was a lot of info I thought people wanted, that they never really did.

So, I pared it down to the questions I get most often, and reorganized it into a number of different pages to make things clearer.

The default page is “FAQ/HELP – Purchasing Cartoons“:

Faq2