Admittedly, it’s been a while since I’ve gone through the logs to check where we’re at with signatures being generated, how often they’re updated, and being served up and viewed on a daily basis. ToonSig is pretty self-sufficient and generally runs pretty smoothly without much intervention on my part. So I don’t log in much to check how things are going.

Well, apparently we’ve generated and served up over 15,000 signatures now, which is quite an impressive number considering we started just one year ago this last February. I’m quite flattered that you all have chosen ToonSig to generate your World of Warcraft forum signatures. I hope that we can continue to accommodate that need out there.

As a part of general maintenance, I will go through and remove old images that have not been updated nor viewed within a particular time frame, ensuring that we keep our database and file system clean, current, and remove signatures that are stagnant and have had no activity for some time. Today I went through and removed about 3,500 old signatures, ones that have not been updated nor viewed since January 31st, 2010. We’ve still got a strong base of users keeping their signatures current and are serving up on average 100,000 signature views per day, and of that, nearly 3,000 unique signatures. Not bad.

With Cataclysm coming up, we’re looking to expansion of services for ToonSig and hope to continue to provide a quality service to you. Thanks for using ToonSig!

Today we released version 0.6.4 that contains a few small fixes, including the following:

• We’ve got rid of the advertisement on the character generation screen in favor for a donate button. Please consider donating to ToonSig — it helps cover our hosting/bandwidth costs, encourages future development efforts, and does a little good in the world. We contribute 10% of all donations received to UNICEF to offer aid to those struggling in developing nations. Donate today.
• We also fixed a slight bug in the talent spec display. Primary specs were showing up based upon what was currently enabled in your character, not what is necessarily your primary spec. We have fixed that and now your primary and secondary specs will display appropriately.

Purging inactive signatures that have neither been updated and viewed before August 14, 2009. There are a TON of signatures that have been created but don’t appear to be used, so we’re going back and purging all toons that have not been updated and not viewed more than 90 days ago.

Current signature count: 5,888
After purge: 5,235
Total toons purged: 653

We’re clearing out signatures older than July 1st that have not been updated or viewed since then, both registered members and non-member signatures. These purges are intended to keep our database and image repository current and encourage active use of ToonSig and the signatures that you create.

Purge results: 251 old signatures removed from the database and image library.

It’s Tuesday morning, I haven’t had my coffee yet, and have a little bit of bear in me today. Grrrr! And nothing makes bears more feisty than orphaned and neglected toon signatures that have not been given the chance to shine. That, and maybe if you poke at him or steal the six pack that he rightfully stole from you because you left it sitting out overnight outside your tent.

Grrrr! /swipe

Ok, the criteria for this house cleaning… signature images and their correlating recordsets are being removed if:

• Has not been updated before April 1st
• No recent HTTP activity or requests with that image (not being used on websites or forums and seen)

One important piece has been left out… toons that are assigned to a member account. The above purge includes signatures bound to accounts that have no HTTP REQUEST activity (i.e., they are not being used or seen, and are not being served up by us).

May the purging begin.

// purge result: 136 signatures removed

While some of the French were confirming the semantics between this and next Wednesday, informing us that patch would be coming the Wednesday that follows this next Wednesday — phew need to catch my breath — patch 3.2 is effectively live today. I finished downloading it this morning and installing it and have to endure the 8–4:30 grind before I can battle the lag boss tonight.

In what is probably related news, the Armory server has not been refreshing data all weekend and is still out of date. So if you gained a level or two, racked up some achievement points, or got some uber gear in Ulduar and your stats aren’t reflecting it, give it a bit of time. We hope that the Armory will be refreshing data again after this patch hoopla settles down.

As you might have picked up from our Twitter feed, we’re planning out the development of a raid and event calendar system for your guild that integrates right into our ToonSig system. This calendar would be synced up to your toon information, which would include class, spec, and level information available to raid leaders for scheduling and picking members for their raids. Additionally, we’re considering expanding it to realm-wide raids for PUGs and larger events like capital city raids and such.

So we want to know what you think. Would you and your guild be open to trying a new raid calendar system, or are you pretty well locked into what you’re using now? Would it change your mind if it were free? Take our poll:

Some of the features that we’re considering into the development of the raid/event calendar:

• Automated spec integration, allowing you to choose appropriately from tanking, healing, dps, and hybrid roles
• Automated level integration, ensuring that you sign up appropriate minimum level requirements for raids or instances
• Single-click approval administration
• E-mail notifications and reminders
• Custom URL’s for your guild raid calendar
• RSS feed of your events and raids
• And more…

If you have some great ideas that you would like to contribute, just post them below in the comments section. Also, if you would like to participate in the beta testing when development is near complete, e-mail us: support AT toonsig DOT com and provide your toon name(s), your realm name (indicating US server or EU server), and an e-mail address that we can use for sending and obtaining feedback.

Next month we’ll be launching Because I just couldn’t wait, and because it really didn’t take that long to integrate, we’ve launched a new service for your World of Warcraft characters. Both Melchizedeck and I are great fans of bit.ly and similar services, allowing us to have abbreviated links for lengthy URL’s. And because links to things like the WoW Armory, Wowhead Profiler and other services are so lengthy, we’re offering a similar service for free.

Using your signature number (found in your signature’s image name, e.g. 1000, 1001, 1002, etc.), you can access the Armory, Profiler, Be.Imba, and even your signature image using our new LFG.VC service.

Using the following URL’s, swap out the pound sign (#) with your signature number and you’re all set!

• Blizzard Armory: http://lfg.vc/a/#
• Be.Imba character auditor: http://lfg.vc/b/#
• Wowhead Profiler: http://lfg.vc/p/#
• Your signature URL: http://lfg.vc/s/#

Example link to armory: http://lfg.vc/a/1000

Alternatively, members can access these links by logging into ToonSig and clicking on the info buttons in their dashboard.

You can thank us later.

I’ve recently put together a video that covers the general features of ToonSig along with highlights on why you ought to become a member at ToonSig. Among the features is the ability to batch update all of your signatures with a single click. Check out our features and tutorial video: