my name is william and i’m the spirit haunting this blog. after tragically passing away in the war on pointless drama, i return as an adult who doesn’t engage with nonsense a vengeful spirit!
CORPOREAL REMNANTS
all downloads
ts2 // you can also view my GOS index here
ts4
SPECTRAL SCRAWLINGS
spirit box : general posts
ouija board : answered asks
DARE TO COMMUNE WITH THE DEAD?
wcif friendly! my inbox and dms are open! feel free to ask me anything! i am also open to cc suggestions or requests* for ts2 and ts4! (requests are accepted based on whether or not i’m skilled enough to take them on. if you send me a request and i don’t answer for a while, i’m probably working on it 😉)
my tou: do whatever you want, just give credit where it’s due and NO PAYWALLS. EVER. no early access, no limited access, no “dm me for the download”. if you use my work for your project it must be shared for free immediately and stay free indefinitely
Well it wasn’t just me, to be fair. I would have never been able to without @fireflowersims help and HugeLunatics trust in both of us. Thank you to both of them for their work and thank you @teaaddictyt for reaching out and doing the more public communication.
I’m super happy I got the chance to work to fix it. It wasn’t an easy undertaking. It seemed like every little thing would cause more errors, I fixed one and another thing broke. But now it seems stable, finally.
A lot of technical stuff below the cut, beware.
Fixing such an old forum is not easy. Documentation is rather sparse because the framework it runs on is old. There is however a more modern version, but updating is difficult. Here was the issue for the forum - upgrading failed.
A website (usually) consists of two different parts: 1 - The files. They contain the code, scripts, designs, images, attachment, profile pictures etc. 2 - The database. The database connects all the different parts and tells the website where to find something. Everything gets stored in tables, assigned IDs and given values. Everything written, each post and topic is also stored in the database. So without the database the whole page would be useless.
It was clear from the beginning that the database was the culprit for the failed upgrades. I got an earlier backup from HL and started working.
I set up a local environment with two versions of XAMPP. One running on php 7.4 (the last version having compatibility for the forum framework version and the upgrade script to the recent version) and the other on a modern 8.3, which was the same as the version the server @fireflowersims set up for GOS.
I ran the upgrade script (which consists of 4 separate parts) on the old backup and ran into errors right away. The script would just outright crash on me, most often without a log or message. The (local) server would just stop responding. My original plan had been to upgrade to version 2.0 first, then 2.1, since it was the recommended order. However the database backup had already been partly upgraded to 2.1. That was the reason my upgrade script failed. Reversing those changes could have been a possibility but extremely time intensive.
(This is the frontpage of the upgrader. I stared at it so much. Like you can see it has a ton of steps)
Instead I asked for the current database and HL provided it to me. This one was already further along on the upgrade and I could see the error HL had run into before handing over. I had to look at the upgrade scripts and source php files to diagnose what the framework was expecting - and failing - to find in the database.
That’s where I found the main culprit for *most* of the errors: Time tables. The framework saves every action that a user does in a log, a long table with the action, an id and a date. This was where everything had gotten wrong. The upgrader expected to see one column for the date, named *day*, while the current table had a different column for day, month and year. I tried fixing the table at first but that didn’t seem to work, so I completely deleted the table and created a new empty one myself. (By now I think the issue stems from forgetting to uninstall certain packages before upgrading, more on that later)
That was possible because the log actually doesn’t hold relevant information for the forum to work. It just records each step, probably for moderation purposes. Once I had done that step the upgrade script was finally able to proceed.
There were a few more errors where I had to look at what the script was doing, find the corresponding code in the sources and edit the database myself. Thankfully the code is relatively well commented and named, so I was able to find what I needed.
Finally I got the upgrade script to run to the end and I was actually able to open the forums (local) page. I hadn’t been able to for now so it was a first. But a lot of stuff was still missing, like all the topics. I could see that the posts were back, but not sorted correctly.
The fix was simple but annoying. The forum framework comes with a repair_setting.php file which I had run several times to fix all the paths, but apparently it didn’t fix *all* of them. So back to the database I went, ran some queries and fixed them myself.
Then the forum finally worked again!
(This is what the forum looked like when I first opened it. It ONLY had recent posts)
(The working local forum, no files yet with the default theme. Seems wrong to look at GOS without the dark theme, right?)
There were still a few things I needed to fix but the database seemed to work fine now. I had never done so many queries in my life. I know SQL, and had to fix databases before but not this intensely. So I guessed I learned something new haha.
Next was the exciting step to upload my clean install to the server. @fireflowersims and I had some directory issues, but I was able to fix them manually once again.
Then I had to take a look at the files which mostly consist of avatars and attachments. They didn’t work at all once moved to the clean install. Once again I took a look at the code and realized that the upgrade script would have changed those files as well, but because I ran it on a clean install it didn’t actually do this step.
I didn’t want to run the upgrade script again, worried that it would mess up a now working database. Instead I wrote a script myself that sorted through all the attachments, looked for the IDs of the avatars from the database so it could move and rename them.
Last were the attachments. This was an easier fix. They just had to be given the ending .dat. @fireflowersims ran a command through the console and then the attachments worked too!
We were getting closer!
Next was the theme. The old theme didn’t work on the modern framework anymore so @fireflowersims looked for a new one which I customized with CSS, trying to get it closer to the way the forum looked before. I think it turned out quite alright, hope you guys think so too!
(Trying to find out what CSS class addresses what? Make everything red and green!)
(All the spider webs)
Next was packages, or mods, to the framework. Fire and I encountered some hiccups here too, since there were some leftovers in the database. The packages hadn’t been properly deinstalled before running the upgrade script, which was another source of the errors. I tried fixing them manually but one of the packages would continue to just break the site no matter what I tried, so we settled for an alternative.
Some more work was put into SSL and making the forum secure. Once again some settings seemed to just break the page and each time I had to go back in the database and manually fix what had gone wrong. It was tedious but by now I knew my way around quite well.
@fireflowersims handled a lot of the server administrative work and DNS settings. I know very little about that part so having @fireflowersims there was great and they made sure the page is reachable at the correct address.
So yeah, I hope the site stays online for a long time now. It’s such a big part of our community and communities history. I used to download so much from there when I was younger. I wanted to give back to the community I love so much. That was the reason I spent many many hours digging through code and old forum threads.
Jules, I cannot emphasize enough just how cool you are for having done all of this work to get GoS back online! I'm glad I was able to provide a good new space for GoS to live from now on and assist with all the DNS. It was a trip alright, and I'm glad we could work together on this!
You are a hero and I (and I bet so many others) am so grateful for your skill and dedication! ♥️
Back in 2023, @hugelunatic-deactivated20260510 gave @simnostalgia shit for archiving/scraping GoS “just in case,” citing concerns over scraping, bandwidth, and preservation itself.
Now GoS and Sims2Artists are suddenly gone, and people are left scrambling through remnants, mirrors, and whatever archives survived.
That is exactly why preservation matters.
You cannot discourage archival efforts and then act surprised when people are upset that massive parts of Sims 2 history vanished with little warning. You also cannot get angry over backlash when there was never any clear, direct communication to the wider community.
People were explicitly told that if GoS was truly at risk of going down, there would be an announcement.
No real community-wide warning was ever given.
And honestly, this is where the messaging becomes incredibly frustrating.
We were told:
hosting costs were manageable,
the site was not going anywhere as long as ads/donations covered most costs,
out-of-pocket expenses were still within budget,
scraping was mainly an issue because it increased bandwidth/server load,
“if I were not willing/able to continue, then there would be an announcement,”
and later posts even made it sound like things were functioning again after the PHP fixes.
Most people interpreted that as stability returning.
So yes, people are understandably confused and frustrated now, because the messaging for years was essentially:
“Things are annoying, but manageable.”
Not:
“Hey. This is serious. Archive what you can now. I may be done.”
And no, buried technical posts about PHP upgrades and drive failures are not the same thing as directly communicating that to the wider community.
I literally had to use archived Tumblr pages just to reconstruct the timeline before speaking on this.
And honestly, we are lucky @simnostalgia even had the foresight to preserve as much as they did back in 2023, because otherwise even more would likely be gone forever or nearly impossible to piece back together. But that archive is still missing huge amounts of resources, attachments, images, updates, and years of content added afterward.
What makes this even more frustrating is that @simnostalgia received backlash for trying to preserve the site in the first place. At this point, I honestly hope they feel vindicated, because this situation is exactly why archival efforts matter.
People absolutely would have helped preserve, mirror, archive, financially support, or even transition these sites if the situation had been communicated clearly, especially if HugeLunatic had simply said:
“I am done. Someone else needs to preserve or host this now.”
if hugelunatic had just made a fucking fundraiser i guarantee we would have raised the money in like 2 days max bc most of us r old bitches now and EMPLOYED it legit astonishes me that he didnt, idg how u can see smth as community driven as gos as ur personal lil project that goes down when u decide ure done w it
MULTIPLE CREATORS ON MTS/MOD THE SIMS HAVE BEEN COMPROMISED
A few hours ago, Kuttoe sent an announcement in Sims After Dark that NateTheL0ser's MTS account was compromised with several uploads containing a new script file called "silkrose_debug" that attempts to download files from a third-party website. It was confirmed that more creators have had their accounts compromised in the second announcement.
It would be highly recommended to avoid the site completely until everything is back to normal. And if you really want to download something, do so at your own risk. Make sure to scan your PC and download ModGuard. If either of them have detected something, delete it and immediately change all of your passwords. And in a worst case scenario, wipe your OS and change your passwords from a different, uninfected device.
Decor and clothing should not have script files included!
Current list of confirmed, affected creators: PurrSimity, jellyheadDimbulb, and NateTheL0ser (has regained control of their account, however you should still be VERY cautious)
Hey guys, I'm sorry to update like this but im unfortunately in a pretty bad situation right now.
The abusive situation im in escalated a lot today and it's to the point where we really have to find another place asap. I have no internet access, i got a second sim card phone line in secret to use to help with leaving but its not working and i'm trying to fix it now (im at the library for wifi and wont be for long). Me and the person that depends on me arent sure whether we'll be able to get back in the house tonight as weve been threatened multiple times as well as our cats that are still in the apartment. I think we can get police assistance to get back in if it goes wrong but i'm also scared of how that will escalate it more and/or if the police themselves will even care. I dont know whether we'll need to get a hotel room for the night but I dont have enough for that, a meal and literally anything else we might need tonight. All we were able to get before leaving was some peanut butter crackers and i havent eaten at all today due to everything happening. I have about $50 to my name currently and thats it for the two of us. We're scared to go back but we obviously cant stay like this for more than a night at most. There's no shelters near us, no public transport and we have no other friends or family in the area. Im so sorry to post this again but im truly in a bad spot right now. Any advice anyone has is truly appreciated and im also gonna link my donation links again, kofi is the best option right now since it goes to my p..ypal or if youve sent a kofi tip before please dm me if you want and i can share my payp.l directly to you so there isnt fees. The library closes at 6 so I'll only have access to here until then unless I get my sim card working which will be a payment in itself. Im trying to conserve all i have and make the best decision I can right now.
Thank you guys so much for all your kindness and im so sorry again that I'm bringing this to yall and im still in this situation. Im hoping so much this is finally the turning point to crawling out of this hole were in. I never want to post something like this again im truly embarassed and sick over it. Ill keep you guys updated the most i can, tomorrow I'll come back to the library if nothing else. My laptop screen is currently broken so I cant do anything cc related right now but I will as soon as I can figure out a way to fix it.
