Heoo! I'm finnish simmer who usually posts sims 2 related stuff (more of sims 3 lately tho, but eh sims 2 will always be my main of the simses)
In sims 2 I have (about) 3 year old Build a city challenge tagged Benbirth BACC! It's based on my own ruleset that I'm sloppily gluing together. ':D
Read the story of Benbirth from the beginning!
My sideblogs:
@pikselifunds -> for sims 2 cc finds
@pikselisimspo -> for sims building inspiration. Has buildings from all the games and some building inspiration posts (maybe adding irl stuff not sure)
@pikselisims3finds -> for sims 3 cc finds
My downloads tag. Mainly for my building makeovers from the sims 2 game. I do plan on learning more about cc making, but... well...
...and also this fun tag for my favorite buildings that I have done !! â¨
A tag for my sims 3 stuff (because it don't have like a challenge or something that i'm playing, for sims 2 stuff you can mostly block benbirth bacc if you don't want to see it? not sure how tag blogging works)
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Andrew Wendland has not been seen around Benbirth for a while. Maybe his thief lifestyle has ended for good, or maybe he has something else entirely going on. Marrying the Mayor of Newlora sure has it's benefits...
given the current climate this pride especially i feel i must mention that i love my trans friends, i stand with trans people in the fight against transphobic legislation and those who would enforce it, and this blog is not a good place for you to be if you do not vibe with that
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Aka: the clarity and communication that you deserve
Hi everyone. As some may have caught already, GoS is not dead (anymore)! During the period that it was, however, so much drama started and if you ask me; it all comes down to people not knowing what's going on and making assumptions that further sparked panic. So, let's clear some stuff up for those who got caught in the rumor mill.
Oh and if you haven't, it's worth reading @julessims excellent writeup on how she got GoS working again.
This is gonna be focused a bit more on communications stuff. Like, a bit more general I guess?
Q: what did you do?
A: I helped get GoS back online. @julessims did the actual hard work of upgrading the forum. @teaaddictyt played a role by facilitating communication and doing some PR (even if that wasn't received well by many a simmer) and ofc hugelunatic provided files, databases and the occasional bit of relevant information. I approached lunie and provided help with hosting, DNS and ensuring the files were safe and handling some communication. It was teamwork (and jules did most of it if you ask me).
Q: why didn't lunie communicate that it would be rehosted?
A: I'm not sure what lunie's exact motivation behind cancelling the hosting was and if I knew it wouldn't be mine to share, but I do know that @julessims and I upgrading and rehosting wasn't planned. It was a spontaneous action on our ends and so lunie couldn't have told you beforehand. I'm really glad that lunie decided to trust us with this and hope GoS will have many more years!
Q: why didn't you communicate any of this?
A: I thought my time would be better spent actually doing the work instead of playing communications department, fielding questions and countering people's wild speculations. I did think about making a post clarifying matters when it became clear people were making some pretty wildly incorrect statements, but I had other things to do. Better to focus on what matters than to get caught up in more miscommunications.
Q: GoS looks different now. Why?
A: the new look of GoS is a direct consequence of the upgrade. The old theme was not made to fit the new software and the conversion process does not convert themes. Seeing GoS in the default (white) theme felt so wrong, so we picked a good-looking dark theme and @julessims modified it to look more like classic GoS, with great success, I think. Still, it is and never will be truly identical. I don't think it's a bad thing.
Q: is the site in archive mode or can I comment?
The site is not in archive mode. It is a live forum. Posting works, registration works, if anything doesn't work, you should find a mod to message so either they or @julessims or I can try to troubleshoot and fix the issue.
In fact, you should comment! Forums are best when people leave comments and engage. Go express how much you like a piece of CC, contribute to the current theme (fittingly about renovating old things) or talk about something!
Q: why did it have to be upgraded? Couldn't it have just stayed now it was?
A: no. It really couldn't. GoS was running SMF 1.1.21 on PHP no higher than 5.3. The newest version is 8.5. PHP 5.3 had been obsolete since 2014. It would've been difficult to find a host that would be willing and able to host GoS and even if that could be found, it'd still leave it vulnerable to bugs and vulnerabilities resolved in newer versions of SMF and PHP. Credit to lunie's host for having continues to support it for this long, many wouldn't. Now that the forum has been upgraded and is running nicely on 8.3, it should be all good to go for many years to come.
Q: just a forum upgrade? So why did it go down?
A: make no mistake: going from something running on PHP 5.x to 8.x is no small leap and had to be done in steps. There were a lot of issues converting the database to the new format which resulted in all sorts of errors that needed manual database conversions. Upgrading a forum, particularly an old one with more than 600.000 posts is in fact not a piece of cake. There were also traces of a prior attempts to upgrade that complicated matters even more. @julessims made an excellent write-up of the technical bits if you're interested.
Q: who is running GoS now?
A: lunie is still forum admin and it will be up to her to decide what to do about the day to day running of the forum. Whether she'll be running it herself, with the help of others or elect someone else will be her choice in the end. As for hosting: that would be me.
Q: so does that mean we can stop archiving?
You could, but I would honestly suggest at least backing up your own favourite CC, regardless of where it's shared or hosted. Also, you can consider looking up an "auto archiving" extension for your browser that will automatically save pages to the wayback machine. The web archive has a page with resources
Q: *insult angry comment about hugelunatic*
A: you are 100% entitled to your anger and frustration. GoS is an important part of the Sims community and losing it, even for a little bit was a huge blow. It's understandable to be angry. Angry comments, however, were never gonna resolve the issue. Angry comments would not get GoS back nor would comments defending hugelunatic for that matter. What did help was working with hugelunatic. No files+database = no forum. Squabbling was not gonna get either back. Saying that, it's important to acknowledge that I was in a good position to do what needed to be done in regards to skills and connections which is not a privilege most people have. I get why people were angry and given that most were not privy to what was going on behind the scenes, it's no wonder everyone got as upset as they did. I also wouldn't have reacted well if I wasn't in direct communication with lunie and working on getting the site back.
Q: what's the plan now?
A: well, sims2artists still needs an update. I hope we can do that sometime soon. I'll also be keeping an eye out for any errors and aim to implement some extra security headers for the site. We also still need to fix some matters in regards to the domain and DNS. I also hope to have some more contact with the GoS mods so we can discuss hosting and what my responsibility and theirs is. Like, write down who is responsible for what and who can be contacted by my host should I pass away unexpectedly, for example. These things happen, so it's good to have backup plans and emergency contacts.
Q: did you have any freakouts tho?
A: certainly. First, when GoS and S2A went down. I was afraid the files and the S2A DB could be gone for good. I was also afraid that lunie wouldn't be willing to work with us and truthfully I also had the fear that if she got more agitated, we could risk losing the files and database. Fortunately this didn't happen, in fact: lunie gave us the resources and helped us out where necessary so we could get GoS back online. I'm very thankful for that.
I also got dragged by my emotions a bit when an unhelpful reddit post suggested that Delphy of MTS infamy might have something to do with hosting and when lunie mentioned something about an offer of hosting as is, no upgrade required. I may have freaked out and freaked out some other folks in the process (my apologies for that. You know who you are). There were many freakouts and I think it was good I didn't make any tumblr posts about this before we got GoS back. I stand by my decision it wouldn't have helped. Freaking out in private was bad enough.
Q: can you tell us what you actually did technically?
A: certainly! First, I set up hosting and new empty databases for GoS (and eventually: sims2artists). I made sure all the required aliases were in place so that when the DNS records for gardenofshadows.org.uk were switched over, it'd find the correct place on the webserver to go to. I also provided a subdomain on a domain of mine to test the forum live before it'd be moved back to the correct domain.
I also got access to the FTP for the original GoS hosting and was able to grab all the files and reupload what was necessary to the new server. While jules was in PHP hell I also cleaned up some stuff on Sims2artists. It's not gonna be anything you notice, but it's something.
I also did a number of things on the webserver, including changing directories. At some point I accidentally moved the forum to example.tld/gardenofshadows/gardenofshadows/gardenofshadows/index.php if you'd believe it. Finally I helped set the DNS records for the move. An SPF record went missing, but was quickly fixed. I also added some HTTP Headers to be served when visiting GoS and a lil something to hopefully keep AI bots from scraping and spamming HTTP requests. If you notice link previews not working: sorry, that'd be the X-Frame header.
Tldr: webserver and domain and DNS stuff; hosting infrastructure
Q: what about hosting costs?
A: right now they're so low we could call them non-existent. Should that change, I don't expect it to be above âŦ100,- per calendar year. Probably closer to âŦ50,-. Aka: it's not an issue. No need for ads. Should fundraising ever be needed, I will discuss it with the mods first.
Now go leave some comments on GoS!
Anyways, if you have any more questions, don't hesitate to ask. There's a lot more to say about this. But hopefully this does clarify some matters.
**I am editing this post based on feedback in the comments.**
I would still like everybody to stop, pause, make some really tight fists with their hands, now shake them out, and do some deep breathing.
I would still like to ask people to sloooow down. The internet moves fast but sometimes, life moves more slowly.
There are still efforts going on behind the scenes to get GOS back online (and Sims 2 Artists).
New hosting has been secured. The website php needs upgrading and this has not been working, but people are working on it.
I know its hard when things happen and you don't know what's going on.
Instead of panicking, jumping to conclusions, making angry posts, it's time to offer support, be patient, wait, ask what's happening without getting mad.
And please, remember kindness and empathy. Lunie has been trying to update GOS for months, and she is exhausted. It's down right now, but not dead (yet).
I do not deny this situation has been handled badly. I do not condone hateful or aggressive language FROM anyone directed TO anyone.
The latest update I have is that the site PHP is ancient, and it will be extremely difficult to update it so that the site can be rehosted, but people are trying.
I'm even probably roping in my IT dude husband who does web hosting and deals with this sort of thing, but who is not a simmer and has no idea what GOS really is.
I will try to actively post more updates as I receive them so that communication can be clear and we can all know what's going on.
Like many of us, I grew up with Garden of Shadows. To me, it was more than just a forum. It was a place I could ask for help, learn new skills and, best of all, find amazing content in any style I could possibly want. I loved the board names, the people, the themes; everything, really.
And I admit I was more than a little heartbroken to find it gone.
After mulling it over, I decided that I wanted to preserve what I possibly could. I spent a few hours yesterday running through strategies and ideas about how to best go about it, and the best I could come up with was, well, exactly the same.
So, here it is: the Garden of Shadows mirror forum.
I've only just started, but I hope to add a little bit to it every day. The primary focus will be on preserving all the knowledge and custom content. I'm tackling it myself, but if you feel so inclined, you're more than welcome to join in.
--
PS. I am not here to offend, break Terms of Use, or to step on any toes. This is simply an effort to preserve content and knowledge for a game I have played and loved for over twenty years. Thank you âĨ
I took a long break from Benbirth and only have started to get back to it this year (+ uploading some old gameplay pictures).
...So after a long break Newlora's houses weren't looking that sharp to me... This is the first build with the redo. Planning on redoing mostly all the residential lots. This build consists of 3 lots. I apartment and 2 shops under it. None of these are finished but all shapes and some details are there :3 !
I already know this one room apartment is gonna be my fave
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Would something like sims reactions to weeds be something of like personality based? (I'm talking about the weeds you get from your bushes not from your crops)
What I mean is like how weeds plummet the environmental score of all sims. I think it would be more fun to have some people not mind them or even love them!
Maybe plant sims would love them and sloppy sims would not mind them :o.
I'm looking for Gep-Extra that makes the outside of the drawer + drawing be one recolor and the wood be one for the table (i believe it's from the seasons). I have one gep-extra of it but it only changes the drawers of the drawer and not the outside of the drawer.
Like basically i don't want this to happen with the drawer. I want drawer as one subset and wood table as one.
I'm trying to make drawer only recolors but it's impossible ;__;
Bert got really traumatized by the constant alien encounters in the Pikkupeura and Pajulahti household and upon growing up decided to hate all supernaturals.
Not sure how Omar Pajulahti the EVIL WITCH will take this... ':D
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Wilhartti's new love Brenda Shaikh actually lives with Opaattus and Aunu in the Lanti household. Moved in after Ramisa moved away. Opaattus and Lanti need all the money they can get. They are actually thinking of having a baby so they left the other room empty for now.
Meanwhile the Lanti household was having their breakfast Veijari from the Heripert houshold was running late to school. The teenager's outing made him sleep in a little.
