https://gardenofshadows.org.uk/gard...adows/index.php just says "The upgrade will either work or it won't. xD" and HL's tumblr is missing.

No idea, but I've had that message too.

@HugeLunatic Is everything okay? Should we put paper bags over our heads and eat some peanuts or something?

Wouldn't that make it hard to eat the peanuts

Possibly it means the upgrade did not work…it was apparently a coinflip anyway!
S2artists has been working, though, and I thought it was all in the same place…

is anyone aware of a backup of what was on there, by chance?

Not a full backup, but a lot is archived on archive.org.

Well now S2A seems to be [email protected] things are okay...

Nothing was actually stored on GoS or s2a, all files and images were hosted off site. So find it on the wayback and links should be good.

Hosting has been suspended cause I stopped paying.

I had an offer for hosting elsewhere but it required getting GoS upgraded to the current version of php, which no matter how many times I edited tables it would error out. There were many warnings about issues while doing the upgrade due to the size of the tables.

Okay, wayback machine it will be! Thanks for the update.

...sadly, the pages I am trying to find all claim to be unarchived and 'available' but just lead to the error page. Hope it will work better in a while - maybe...

thanks for update!

Link I had from GoS the same, I put title in google and got slightly different link and that one worked. Try that while its still possible

With all due respect, many, many pages AREN'T archived and DON'T work. I, of course, respect and am extremely grateful that you ran the site for so long, but why wasn't there a more coordinated effort to actually archive stuff before if you knew this would be happening/you would stop paying? A few posts on Tumblr would've had the Sims community archive the entire site in days or weeks. I'm sure that many would put the effort in. Hell, if I knew it was happening, I would have plenty of free time and could've helped loads... Not to mention the argument of "everything is stored off-site, so it's fine" is nonsensical as well. You can't just go to Mediafire or SimfileShare and search for a specific download. You need to have a link.

So yeah, A LOT of stuff is lost, or made pretty much inaccessible to many regular players/downloaders (who might not know about waybackmachine) and I just wish there was a little more communication before so that the community could've at least tried to save/preserve the site... :/

They did (manually?) move pretty much everything from the old SimPearls to the new SimPearls site in a short amount of time.

GoS is a bigger site - but give the community a few weeks and a bit of combined effort, and all the CC would be archived, full posts and everyting, to a new place.

Pre-2023 content archived here: https://archive.org/details/screens...7-10483dfgdfg-2

Before you all go running to reddit with accusations, why don't you wait to see if HugeLunatic has anything else planned? It could be that reasonable hosting will be found soon, or perhaps a technical workaround for the php errors could be found, or a donation drive organised. So far, all that @HugeLunatic has said is, this is why the site's down. They haven't actually stated that there are no plans to do anything in future. Real life stuff takes time, but I see the internet outrage is faster than light. With all due respect to YOU, no-one's rights have been violated here, and slinging mud at someone who has hosted a site and taken care of the technical side of that for many years, is just not cricket. So STFU.

You should be ashamed of yourselves, posting about someone in this way on another site.

I knew other people asked about GoS outage on there, I posted so people know

Huh? What is shameful about it?? Different people are on different sites. Some people get their info on Sims reddit, some on Sims tumblr, others here. There has been minimal information, so people will talk. Let's calm down with the toxic positivity, there's nothing wrong with a little bit of accountability. All people wanted was some communication. We all understand real life, but writing a post warning people ahead of time costs nothing. Instead, HL deactivated their tumblr, all sites are inactive, and many people are left very confused.

Sorry dude, it's just the people in the comments making me angry, bringing up something that HL allegedly did in the past and saying 'this is an even shittier thing for them to do' and suchlike. It's like the whole world thinks everyone owes them something.


What the heck do you think HL is accountable for? For fuck's sake people, if you like something, download it and keep it on your own storage which you pay for. No host of any site owes you anything.
Don't post about how outraged and wounded you are about a specific person on a platform they might not even partake in. It's rude.

I think that people are just disappointed that there was no warning that the site might go down permanently. The sims community is very willing to help, whether it be by archiving files or assisting a site owner. Because of the lack of communication it feels like we weren't trusted or important enough to involve.

I have my own physical server if you want to try moving it there. Everything runs through CloudFlare tunnels on it because my ISP gave me CGNAT (despite me asking for a static IP and being told I was getting one and it was free).

I think with enough warning, it would've been easier to find a solution. Hopefully, there is a good solution to this. I'd not like to see another much used forum/site (especially not one that's got a large chunk of the community's combined CC efforts) go the way of the dodo...

It's not just the CC and links that go missing when a forum/site suddenly shuts down, it's also information in posts (where to find meshes, install information for non-Downloads items, previews, important info...) - not all uploaders add such info in their zip files.

(Personally, when I download stuff nowadays, I've taken to add a notepad document with a copy of the text in the post + update info so I know if I have the latest version. I also save preview pics and any needed meshes. Goodness only knows how many times lately a site or page suddenly became unavailable within a short amount of time, and seeing as I hoard more CC than my game could possibly contain, having that additional info has proven to be quite useful when I do want to find or use something I downloaded a good while ago).

Edited to add: I did have a few things up at GoS, but I'm reasonably sure I've co-posted most of those things to my own site (link below), and if anyone happens to notice something missing I still have the files and (think I have) backups of pictures.

Something extremely relevant to the topic at hand, of course people will talk. Yeah a couple of people were a bit pissy and presumptuous, but most were just bummed out and confused, and at least no one there was cussing anyone out and telling them to shut the fuck up and be ashamed of themselves. Also how is it anyone here's fault if people are rude on another site? Take it up with them.

I have a lot of the Sims 2 Garden of Shadows CC in my Downloads folder, of Clothes, Hair and some other stuff as well I believe.

If anyone plans to archive stuff, I could help with the files.
Unfortunately I am notoriously chaotic with my CC and would have first to figure out what is what exactly, but I definitely have a lot of the files. I loved the CC at Garden of Shadows and (I guess in this case thankfully?) am an absolute CC hoarder.

(Coming to think of it...I probably should make a backup of my Sims 2 folder. My laptop is also gonna kick the bucket eventually...)

It's actually legit crazy how bad this take is lmao. Like is he paying you??