The old reader seems to be gone.

[MichelleCYoung]

Remember the "a certain reader" website that had all those lovely old stories that had once been hosted at the Sims 2 Exchange? The Uglacy, and Fitzhugh legacy, and the other classics? Well, I can't open it, any more! Darn it!

So, my question for your more-tech-savvy-than-I simmers out there is this: "Are these stories stored anywhere else?" If so, can we please get a link up here on Boolprop? I'd love to see a link, possibly under "Sims 2 Completed Legacies" or something, or even int he graveyard section. Just somewhere we can go to read the classics.

[Taube]

Hmm, that's odd. I was just reading something on it two days ago, but you're right, I can't get it to pull up now. Perhaps the server is down or something. I don't know of any other sites that archived Exchange stories, unfortunately.

EDIT: You can kind of access it via the Wayback Machine, however. This seems to be the most recent save of the table of contents, but the links don't always work: here. If you click here, you can see all the pages from that site they have archived. You could search that to see if what you want has been archived. Otherwise, I think we may just have to wait to see if it comes back up in a few days.

[Lorinsv]

I PM'd hooptytrib at LJ to ask him about it.

[MichelleCYoung]

THanks, you two!

OH, please, Plumbob! Let it be a temporary server outage.

I tried the wayback machine (it's one thing I do know about), and none of the links I clicked on were actually able to be opened, except for one picture of a room full of beds.

I wonder what would be involved in getting some real archives published elsewhere, if necessary? I've been thinking of what I would want to post on my own website, and an archive of sims stores would be nice, for at least a part of it. But I am not web-savvy, and frequently on pain pills, so I'd have to get someone to help me, and nobody else in my family, including the two people who know anything about web pages, care about sims stories. Wait, that might be three people who are web savvy. I need to ask my sister-in-law. But she doesn't care about sims stories, either. None of my family read my OWN sims stories, so they wouldn't give a hoot about other sims stories. I even tried introducing them to The White Legacy, and it was like, "Ummmmm, so, why are you laughing so hard?"

HEck, I would donate a small amount (because I'm unemployed, so it would have to be small) to a Kickstarter to fund a Sims stories archive, especially for Sims 2, but even Sims 3 is in danger, because of EA and moving on to Sims 4, and someday, they'll probably abandon it for Sims 5 (and I'll probably still be on my ten-year-old Mac, wondering why they never released FreeTime or Apartment Life for people like me, dagnabbit! EA, I sold all 2 1/2 shares I owned of your stock! At a LOSS! Because I couldn't stand to be part of the company, anymore! So there!)

So, ummm, anyone have a solution? I'll contribute to the best of my limited abilities.

The Sims is Mother. The Sims is Father. The Sims is PsiCorps.
Oooooh, I wonder if there are any Babylon 5 downloads at MTS? Or Firefly! Or... wait, what were we talking about, again?

Dang, I miss the Exchange.

[Twilightoutside]

The Reader seems to be online again! (26.02.2017, 10:56 AM Central European Time)

- so first a sigh of relief

- then the fear of it happening any moment again....

- as for the idea of an archive: good idea - of course, we already have one with the reader... let's see, whether or not Hooptytrib responds to Lorinsv's PM - if he needs help to keep the reader running, including financial one, I'm game....

EDIT: As for making a backup of the reader... not sure, if hooptytrib would like that,but there are some free programs where you can make a mirror copy of an entire website - I found the free program: https://www.httrack.com/ - used it on the reader on a specific link = worked like a charm, even creates an index so you can read all the copied stories from a list... been doing that now...

Now I don't know whether or not copying the entire reader site would work, and especially how much save space you'd need.... but if anyone has a free external harddrive somewhere, he or she could try his/her luck....

[MichelleCYoung]

I don't have an external hard drive, so I can't do it. But I am SOOOO Glad it's back up, and that someone's on the case about preserving it, or a copy, or something.

[Ani-Mei]

I do have a 1 TB external USB drive it's barely full so how would I save this offline?

[Twilightoutside]

Good News! Lorinsv got in contact with Hooptytrib, and he conveniently uploaded the entire reader in 9 zip files to his server: http://clockwatching.net/~jack/bebop/s2/



- Already downloaded, everything works perfectly.

- Together, the zip files are about 12,6 GB big... I think, a standard 16GB USB Flash Drive should handle this already...

[Ani-Mei]

Good to know, I will definitely download them once I get better internet. Here at home with my parents it doesn't like to work so when I get to my boyfriend's house this weekend I'll download them and save them offline (if possible) it would really help if multiple people kept copies of everything. I kinda had a hankering to read LucyPep's Alphabetacy again, just got off a Harry Potter movie marathon.

[Radiochocolate]

I also have quite the bit of unused hard drive space, so I'll be keeping copies of the zip files as well (downloading as of this writing).

I'll try to get them onto a 16GB flash drive as well, at earliest convience. The cheaper ones seem to go for about 100 SEK a piece (15 CAD, 11 USD, 9 GPB, what have you).

[Thaitanic]

it seems to be up again! but its good to have loads of back ups as well

[MichelleCYoung]

I love that I can download these, to read at my convenience. Now that I have upgraded to a zippy-woo computer, with lots of storage space, they are MINE! MINE, I tell you! BWAAAAHAHAHAHHAAAAA!

I've been reading them, at my convenience, but now I don't have to fear them going away again, at an inconvenient time. Thanks so much!

[Twilightoutside]

Short before hoopytrib uploaded his Zip archives, I started copying his reader offline myself, using simple tools a Noob like I could use with button pressing.

My offline reader lists the stories by authors, not distinguishing between big and small letters like hoopty's reader, which was the only thing that annoyed me a bit with it. It tells me how many stories the author has, and the general titles (of course I had to do this all manually. )

Here's a look:

Spoiler:

Too bad, so much other stuff got lost. The internet archive apparently hasn't saved anything but the story page, so certain story titles are visible, the oldest archived story listings even links to the earliest story texts, but without the pics.

Has anybody else saved a few interesting things the reader does not contain? Would be nice to have even more Sims 2 history saved downloadable somewhere...