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.
thank you so much for 100+ followers! i appreciate you all so much ♡ here is a small gift for you, made with love ♡⸜(˃ ᵕ ˂ )⸝ i found some super cute clipart in creative fabrica, hope you like them! you need bon voyage since they use the travel poster, i recommend using these frame recolors by Michelle (˶ᵔ ᵕ ᵔ˶) ‹𝟹
simfileshare / mediafire
made with love 💗ྀི
Thank you so much for everything! 𓍢ִ໋🌷͙֒ ᰔᩚ
hello everyone! i'm very excited to share this! i bring you some food clutter from sulainey, but functional (ㅅ´ ˘ `), meaning you can buy and stock on fridges! also, you can sell them in your grocery shops (..◜ᴗ◝..) it was thanks to belladovah for the inspiration and deedee's tutorial that i was able to do this ♡ hope you like it and enjoy! i will be making more in the future ⸜(｡˃ ᵕ ˂ )⸝♡ i tested it, but let me know if you have any issues ♡︎
simfileshare / mediafire
made with love 💗ྀི
Thank you so much for everything! 𓍢ִ໋🌷͙֒ ᰔᩚ
hello o/ today i bring you a new a breakfast ⋆˚࿔ i wanted to create a kind of mexican breakfast for my simmies so here you go, hope you enjoy! let me know of any issues
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 ♥
heyo everyone! hope you all are doing well! since lately i've been playing a lot my victorian challenge in the sims 2, i decided to create more foods for my simmies, inspired by victorian dishes i found here, hope you like them and enjoy! o/
hi o/ so lately i've been super addicted to my victorian challenge (which is why i haven't shared much), and i realized i need more victorian foods, so im on a quest to create more foods for my game, and ill share them with you \o/
more stuff from the archive of "stuff mog didn't share yet" and you really think I'd have to run out at some point, eh?
well, two tops for the guys and a sporty looking pair of seperates for the ladies.
two spacey themed textures on a mesh by Janika with age converted meshes by DeeDee. one based off the iconic Shepard jacket from Mass Effect (texture by Pixlmonster) and one I threw a spacy pattern on and I don't remember where that came from (probably spoonflower)
the jean jacket mesh is by nonsensical-pixels with the patterned arm texture swapped with the arm from another TS4 jean jacket. Options!
the crop sweater is also by nonsensical-pixels with a base texture by pleyita recoloured. As much as I love the heart arm patches I think it's a lot more versatile without them lol.
and then I made a leggings texture with the idea of having easily pasteable gym leggings for pantsless sneakers and I've yet to put them on any other mesh yet lol. I kept the textures though. These are on this mesh by Janika. :)
wow, that was a lot of talking wasn't it? let's put the downloads behind the link. ^^
\^o^/ hi!
three tops today on meshes by kaluxsims, SkittlesSims and Lucilla!
the Zoe top is just some of the original printed recolours since Lucilla did the solids. It's probably not all of them, just the ones I liked. If someone did this already they probably did all of them but I couldn't find it thanks to Googling being essentially useless now. :F
I think the SamanthaTop texture has some stuff from BlackLily but it's also been about eight million years since I did this so correct me if I am mistaken. D:
Samantha Top
download (TF-AF)
4t2 GP05 Sweat Cropped
download (TF-AF)
4t2 AxA Zoe Top
download (TF-AF)
aqua net hairspray for the sims two (+ bonus: caroll91's joyce wallpaper)
i wanted these in my game and had settled on creating a new mesh because i couldn't find a suitable item to recolor. however, @modernsetstosims2 just so happened to convert soloriya's barber shop deco, which just so happened to include a hairspray bottle. so, here we are! i cannot guarantee 100% period accuracy but i wanted to share it anyways.
aqua net hairspray (4 swatches): download (SFS, mesh included)
joyce wallpaper (1 swatch): download (SFS) - i had this already converted and just sitting in my completed conversions folder, just waiting for be posted. it fits the 80s theme (i think it's supposed to be the walls from stranger things? i don't know, i haven't seen it lol) so i thought i'd include it.
snowghoul
gracieabrams
discoholicmusic
2087
baratheonpilled
