so i've started a new project using archive and a few other scraping tools and also the very slow process of reworking the html of the original sims 2 website that was shut down a while back, i'm trying to get a mostly functional website back up for the public, obviously my main goal is to get the basic site working then design some handlers for login, registration and the exchange as well as getting old maxis uploads working

right now its purely a graphical front page and i've started working on the internal parts of the site, so not a lot to look at but its promising. today i worked on some of the bon voyage and sims 2 about pages as well as hacking the swf files to redirect to pages on my server instead of the now non exisatant sims 2 server, if anyone is interested in lending a hand i'd definately love some help. but for the most part click the link below for a short nostalgia trip

http://www.ravecrocker.com/sims2/

the Wayback Machine site might be able to help with the "non-member" sections of the site.

last I checked, login screens did not work at the Wayback Machine site.

I hope sometime you made the site work. For everyone be able to log on or create an account, upload and download stuff. If I knew how to work with this kind of site, I would help. Good luck

Hey been a while now, how the site is going?

I think if you got that working EA may have something to say about that.

^^That. Especially if it used EA's graphics and whatnot so that it looked just like the EA site. If I were EA, I'd have some issues with that, for sure.

And also, since this was posted two years ago, and the site no longer exists, I think that means the project wasn't continued. Perhaps they realized they would be heading for some legal problems.

EA might have even seen this and sent them a "don't" letter or email.

I think this sad and kinda unfair they aren't doing nothing with it. Also the fans also wouldn't make any monetary profit from it. They don't even sell Sims 2 or give UC anymore

I think it would be very fair of EA to be concerned if someone not at all associated with them was trying to pass off a site as the official EA site. It wouldn't matter if anyone was making any money from it. Companies guard their trademarks and stuff pretty zealously, as they should. Now, if someone was just making an archive of the downloads or the stories and stuff that were posted there, if you could get to them, without using any of the images or text from the old site, that would be one thing and probably perfectly fine. But to make it appear to be the old EA site would be a gigantic legal no-no for long and complex reasons that I'm not going to go into here.

Oh, kinda want to start a small site to reupload some exchange cc from the users that kinda got lost but I think some people still have them in their pcs or something. Any tips?

You'd "just" need to make a site or a blog or something that would be a centralized location for links to reuploads of Exchange stuff, probably organized by category. You and anyone who wanted to help you would then need to contribute and/or find the content and then probably write up descriptions and/or take pics of the things so that potential downloaders would know what they're getting, and then reupload the stuff somewhere that could be linked to from the centralized site.

It would be a lot of work, and I'm not sure how much Exchange stuff is still out there either buried on the web but still recoverable or in people's personal downloads. I imagine a lot of it would look very outdated these days, so I'm not sure if people would have held on to it. But if it's something you'd want to do, it would be doable if you have the time and want to spend that time on such a task.

Most of the cc on the old site would probably look horrible now. You only have to compare cc on this site from 2006 to now and see how far it's improved partly because we all have graphics cards that can see textures and whatnot. I really don't think it's worth trying to resurrect, but best left to fond memories.

A lot of the Exchange downloads had bad quality, and there was no control over what CC they used or which EPs were needed. Most of the CC was scavenged elsewhere. The stories were also of questionable quality, though there was an occasional pearl among the rubble.

I remember I did download some stuff from there, but ended up not using most of it because of the low quality. We're talking pre-2010 here (maybe closer to 2007-8 for the newest contents), and CC uploaded nowadays usually has much higher quality, even from most beginners. Back in the days when the Exchange was one of the main places for CC foraging, you pretty much took what you could get. Then MTS and various other sites came on the field, and people migrated to those instead. The Exchange became the place where beginners and a few loyal members posted, and where you could post pretty much anything you want without quality control and without much respect for other CC creators (most of the sim/house posters over there didn't even list where they'd gotten the CC from, or packed their sims full with other people's CC to get more downloads).

Some people may be interested in finding old stuff fromt he exchange, but I'm not so sure it's worth a lot of trouble unless someone is looking for something very special that was only available on the Exchange.

I still use a lot of old CC but much of it from way back when was horrible even then. I always had my suspicions on some of the things that made it into my game but now I can see that it wasn't just my imagination--even some of the most celebrated TS2 CC creators made rubbish.

Yeah but there's some really good looking stuff there [IMG]<a href="https://s579.photobucket.com/user/thehontry1/media/All%20Grown%20UP/snapshot_99d4d033_f9d4d91b.jpg.html" target="_blank"><img src="https://i579.photobucket.com/albums/ss232/thehontry1/All%20Grown%20UP/snapshot_99d4d033_f9d4d91b.jpg" border="0" alt="Sara photo snapshot_99d4d033_f9d4d91b.jpg"></a>[/IMG] that's one example. And I hope being able to have some quality control over the site

You're right--that one actually isn't too bad. Still, a person can't just go 'round reviving someone's website--that would just be illegal as all get-out without permission of the owner of the intellectual property rights, which is EA. And as for the CC, that belongs to them as well and we've only been able to share it amongst players because they knew if they tried to prevent it their game (and quite possibly their HQ) would go up in flames.

The CC does "belong" to EA in the sense that as soon as anyone puts something into .package format, EA owns it because they own that file format. Plus, people who make CC, whether or not they share it, agreed to cede copyright and control of what they make to EA when they installed the game on their computer and agreed to the end-user license agreement. So, this is true for all CC for any of the games whether or not it was ever uploaded to any of the official sites...or anywhere else, for that matter. However, EA is and always has been perfectly fine with the making and sharing of CC. For one thing, they encourage you to do so, with (free!) tools like Homecrafter and Bodyshop for TS2 and Create-a-World for TS3 and the Exchange, and...something for TS4? Isn't there a "Gallery" where you can upload/download stuff or something? (Don't know, don't care about that game, sorry. ) For another thing, it says so right in the EULA. The only stipulation is that if you share stuff you make, it must be shared freely...which a lot of creators ignore, of course.

Generally, EA likes CC because it keeps interest alive in their games and perhaps encourages people to buy EPs/SPs that they don't yet have. (Like, for instance, if you want a bunch of really cool lots that require EPs you don't have.) It is, essentially, a crapton of free advertising for them. Of course, I'm sure they care nothing about TS2 stuff anymore, because they haven't sold that game since....2012ish? I don't even remember...but they certainly love it for the games they still sell. If they wanted to actively prevent people from making CC, they'd put prohibitions in the EULA and they wouldn't give you tools to make stuff with or a forum to share it on. All that said, so long as it is freely shared, it would be perfectly OK to reupload all the stuff that was on the Exchange if it still exists and can be found. Doing so would be in compliance with the EULA, in any case. If any of the creators are still around, it might hurt their delicate fee-fees, but that's neither here nor there.

What EA WOULD have major problems with, I believe, would be anyone other than themselves reviving the exact format/framework of the old official site. There are myriad legal reasons why doing so would be wrong, wrong, wrong, but just one of those would be that the site used proprietary programming, trademarked graphics, copyrighted text, etc. All of which EA still owns even if the site is gone. If someone did that with stuff that I owned, even if there were disclaimers in the fine print, I'd be seriously pissed and all over them (or at least their web provider and/or ISP) with Cease & Desist letters from my lawyer, pronto.

In any case, regardless of the few nice things that might have been scattered here and there on the site, the CC on the Exchange in general was a bottomless cesspool of utter crap, some of which could corrupt your neighborhoods and perhaps your game, particularly when it came to the lots. It was even worse than T$R, frankly...and that's saying a lot. IMO, it's best left to fond memories, as Jo said. But if someone is willing and has the time to go to the effort of gathering and reuploading and setting up a centralized site of links...have at it. There is absolutely nothing stopping you from doing so, assuming that you can recover/find the content. Just don't be utterly stupid and try to make it look like the old official site because that's just asking for all kinds of trouble.

The houses on the exchange were terrible. One bad thing there also was was that every mod the uploader had got included in the package - that's why early on almost everyone had the mailbox one (clicking on the malbox would do like shift-clicking on it with testing cheats on does) and the expensive base game dishwasher named Candace. Many were just poor quality. Many also had a family in, which we know is a bad thing. Many of the Sims needed (but didn't include) meshes or CC - and didn't tell you where to get it. Pretty sure the game wouldn't have even been successful without the ability to share CC and mods. The game out of box was almost unplayable with all the bugs that needed fixing EAxis never fixed and all the annoying things mods fix - plus the hideous clothing.

^Roughly 90% was either terrible, or seemingly good but only because the uploader had loaded the lots or sims with "stolen/borrowed" CC from other creators. Bad photoskinning and even worse Paint jobs seemed to be more of a rule than an exception. The good stuff was usually so hidden you couldn't find it even if you tried really hard. The search function hardly even worked.

There was a site that resurrected some of the stories found on the Exchange, but I'm not sure if it's still around.

Using the design of the original site might be a bad idea, like iCad said - but it would probably be fine if you found and uploaded old player-made CC from the Exchange to a site with a different design.

The exchange caused me to completely avoid CC for a while when i first played Sims 2 as a kid. A lot of it was low quality and most Sims were just caked over and over with tons of CC. Terrible.

And it's been over a decade but the only stories from the exchange I remember were of the "I caused a fire, let's see what the Sims do with free will activated" and "I made a bad parody of a TV show" variety. And millions of "What happened to Bella?" variations

I remember something about Dina Caliente leaving Mortimer for Santa Claus in one story? And the CC on the Santa Sim was really bad (that was before the Christmas Pack) with the body and head not fitting quite together or something. It freaked me out because it looked like he had a hole in the neck, that's why I remember it I guess.

Oh okay thanks, I am glad I read this because I kinda wanted to make it with a similar look to the old site, not a bit by bit copy tho. By is okay if I collect a bunch of cc that was always free to begin with, credit the creators. To prevent this stuff to become lost media

I would not make it look anything like the official site, if I were you. In fact, I'd go out of my way to make it NOT look like the official site. Just to cover your butt, as they say. Other than that, it is perfectly fine to reupload CC, whether or not it was free. It might be against a creator's wishes that you do so, but I'm going to guess that most of the people who contributed to the Exchange are probably not around anymore to fuss at you. But they might be, so be prepared.

My advice: Frankly, if you want to do this, I'd keep it really, really simple and blog-style, because just gathering and organizing the stuff, if you can still find it, is going to take up enough time. I would make a blog (Tumblr, Livejournal, Dreamwidth, whatever) and take a simple pic (on high graphics settings, with no editing) in-game of each item. Don't use the originally-posted pics, if you find any. You want people to be able to see what the thing is going to look like with modern graphics, not graphics from 10+ years ago and especially not graphics from 10+ years ago that has then been Photoshopped to make it look better. There's a big difference between graphics then and now, and people should know what they're getting. I wouldn't bother with lots, as many of them will corrupt people's neighborhoods if used and/or will give them mods that they don't want. From what people have said about CC-laden Sims where all the CC wasn't included, I'm not sure I'd bother with Sims, either, unless you know for certain that all necessary CC is included. Because if the not-included CC is old, odds are it'll be impossible to find now. Other that that, I'd make a post for each item, using a logical tagging system so that users can easily call up all the posts of, say, adult female clothing. Make sure that everything has meshes. If it doesn't, find the one(s) you need and include them with the downloads. If you can't find the needed mesh, don't upload the item because it'll be useless. Include as much info as you can about polycounts, texture sizes, required EPs, stuff like that. Then, upload the item and put a link to it in the post. And for heaven's sake don't put anything behind something like Ad-fly.

Considering most people who uploaded to the exchange are probably not around the community any longer, it's probably safe to reupload. It's basically the same with sites like the Graveyard - if the original creator isn't around to say anything, reuploading would be fine (unless they actually do come back and say it's not alright, in which case the nice thing would be to remove the item).

Keeping it simple, blog-style or an inexpensive site format would be the best way to go. Don't go for an expensive format that's eventually going to need help running (donations, etc.), or you're going to be stuck with something you can't keep up.


Second that. If it isn't even your original creation to start with (meshes and all), don't even dream of monetizing it. Besides, Adfly gets most of the community claws out, and not in a good way, so better stay as far away as humanly possible from that evil thing.

If the site/blog requires ad banners or similar to stay up (most free or inexpensive sites tend to), that's fine, but again - keep faaaaaaaar away from adfly and similar link shorteners.

We have really made the most of this thread, haven't we :3

Thanks for tip and don't worry I won't put adfly(I hate it myself and I am not an hypocrite) also I don't wanna make money from other people's work