Saturday 3 May 2003

The Add-on Handler released

Written at 01:18 by the Webmaster.

A few days ago I released the Add-on Handler (TAOH). TAOH is (or else will be) THE tool to manage all your downloads for The Sims. At this moment, it doesn't do much more than installing files, but it does that a lot better than other programs. How? Well, it automatically sorts roofs from skins, houses from objects, and of course it also installs animations, walls, floors and skins (both regular and buyable skins). You can install files by simply dragging the downloaded zip-file (or extracted files) to the window. You can drag as many files (or even folders) to The Add-on Handler at once, without having to open each file separately. As if that's not enough, you can read readme files in zip files, and exclude files from installation. If you have an expansion pack installed, you can select which neighborhood to install houses and areas too. The future looks even brighter: you will be able to view and delete files, but you will also be able to put objects in one FAR file which will make The Sims load faster. The back-up feature can make a full back-up of The Sims to wherever you want, so you can burn it to a CD and safely uninstall The Sims without losing anything. You can be one of the first to use this great tool, by downloading it right here. If you have The Neighborhood Handler installed already, you can also download the upgrade version of TAOH (which is a lot smaller than the full version). You can find that right here .

IMPORTANT NOTE: Due to a serious bug concerning the installation of buyable skins in The Add-on Handler 0.1b, an updated version has been released. Meanwhile another major bug concerning the installation of houses and areas has been fixed too, so it's important to upgrade to version 0.1.2b if you're still running version 0.1b. You can download it over here. For more information about the first bug, read this newspost. For information about the second bug, read this newspost.

Saturday 24 May 2003

Members: Please read!!

Written at 22:44 by the Webmaster.

Yesterday (Friday 23 May), something pretty bad happened. An error in our database went unnoticed until then. When making a back-up of the database on my own computer, I accidentally clicked the wrong button, which caused all our member's details to be deleted. Unfortunately this error in the database has been in all the back-ups I made since we changed our layout in March. That means everybody who registered after 15 March 2003, is not registered anymore. Also, everybody who changed their profile after that date, will have to change their details again because those changes are lost too. Although I'm able to re-register everybody maually with the initial details, I'm not going to do that as that would cost me a very long time (over 1000 members registered since then), and I'd have to disable registration for new members until all that data was put back. Also, that could cause some other problems, as many people registered but never activated their accounts. I've decided to recover some accounts, to keep other parts of The Sims Zone working. These are the accounts that were actually used (note you don't need to be logged in to be able to download files). That means that people who registered with their (Sims) site's details in the profile, those who posted comments, and those who posted a site update, are still able to log in using their initial password that was sent to them after registering. If you belong to those people, you'll soon receive an e-mail from me explaining the situation, and what to do. If you registered after 15 March 2003, and your account has not been restored, then you must re-register at this page. I sincerely apologise for any inconvenience caused by this and I take my responsibility for this. I know it's partially my fault too, but I hope you understand that I (of course) never intended to cause these problems. Thank you for your understanding.

So, if you registered after 15 March 2003, and your account has NOT been restored: Click here to register again. You can use the same username as before if you want.
If you registered after 15 March 2003, and your account has been restored: Please follow the instructions in the e-mail you'll get from me soon. The e-mail will be sent to the e-mail address you registered with.
If you changed your password or profile after 15 March 2003, but registered earlier: You need to make the same changes again. You might have to login using an old password. If you don't know what your password is, then you can get it back using the password recovery feature. You can change the password and profile on this page.

Again, I apologise for these problems. I hope you don't mind re-registering if necessary. If you have any questions about what you have to do, or anything else about these problems, please contact me here.