Latest Site News

First off, here are the winners for April:

1st prize $50 Amazon gift certificate goes to Sosliliom
2nd prize $40 Amazon gift certificate goes to Qaen
3rd prize $30 Amazon gift certificate goes to missy_sceeter

PM Thomas with the e-mail you want those certificates sent to.

Secondly, we are happy to introduce the following new Select Artists:

- cippa1982
- ginebra

Give them a warm welcome and check out their great work!

We have now given out 7 free days to all who subscribed or had a subscription from April 24th until now. Those days are useable when you want to use them (you can activate them at will). You can access them by either clicking on the calendar icon on top (if you're an active subscriber) or by going straight to http://www.thesimsresource.com/mytsr/status. You will find the number of days at the bottom of this page along with activation links.

Soon we'll also offer everyone within this time period a 30% discount if you choose to renew your expired subscription.

Once again, we are veery sorry for the hardware problems and we hope this makes up for some of your lost time. :)

We have teamed up with Direct2Drive to offer pre-orders for The Sims 3. This offer gives you some exclusive bonus items on top of the game itself, so make sure you check it out!

Soon we will also offer different bundles for those who wish to subscribe to TSR and pre-order The Sims 3 at the same time - you can expect nice discounts on those packages so stay tuned for more information!

A point of note is that this ad will show for both subscribers and non-subscribers up until the date of The Sims 3 release. It's a static non-animated ad so hopefully it won't be too annoying for you :)

It has been brought to our attention that a malicious Trojan is being sent out to different members of this site. The e-mail is made to look like it's coming from [email protected] and contains an .exe file. Whatever you do, do NOT open this file! Just delete the e-mail straight away. This is not a mail sent out by us! In case you've already received and opened this mail, please see more information about this Trojan here: http://www.symantec.com/security_response/writeup.jsp?docid=2003-121116-2134-99&tabid=2

Lets hope none of you have been infected yet!

If only hardware would play nice for once! After a fairly stable week we have once again experienced a server lockup. Since this lockup require one of us to manually reboot a server it has taken much longer then necessary (our servers are not in anyone's bedroom, unfortunately).

We are truly sorry for this bad experience many of you newcomers and long time members to the site goes through. Once we can safely say our site is stable again we will give 7 free days to all current subscribers and those who were subscribers when this hardware issue began (mid-April). We will also offer a 30% discount to everyone who wish to re-subscribe again (you need to have a subscription history longer then 2 months).

A point of note regarding our subscriptions is that once premium content for Sims 3 is available on TSR, the same subscription will apply for both Sims 2 and Sims 3 content. So feel free to take this opportunity to re-subscribe in good time for the new game as well as our continous Sims 2 updates.

We are proud to welcome another great fashion designer to our Featured Artist family. This time it's the talented olcia_olivinea! Be sure to check out her latest offerings and give her a warm welcome in her guestbook!

As you've surely noticed by now we are still experiencing hardware problems. We've taken several new servers into use and they do not want to play nicely with the rest in the cluster. One going down eventually brings everything to a halt etc. We're working our way through this however at the best of our capacity and we hope to have a more stable solution in place shortly. Thank you all for your patience through this - we will compensate you for the downtime once we've completed this.

For those wondering about your submissions - they will be processed as soon as we're done with this hardware fix.

Here's an update regarding the last weeks site problems. We had a pretty critical hardware failure on saturday evening last weekend, which resulted in one of our central database servers needing a replacement. Given it was the weekend, this took a bit longer then necessary and as a result most of sunday evening the whole website was offline.

The new hardware is now in place and we've also rewritten a lot of the backend code handling downloads, load balancing, caching of pages etc. We are very sorry for all this trouble you've experienced and once we are confident the site is fully operational again, we will grant all subscribers extra days to make up for the downtime. Should there be hickups during the weekend ahead, rest assured we will do our best to keep them at a minimum as we finetune the new setup.

Thank you for your understanding and patience!

Here they are, the winners for March:

- 1st prize $50 Amazon Gift Certificate goes to Monica
- 2nd prize $40 Amazon Gift Certificate goes to Ricci2882
- 3rd prize $30 Amazon Gift Certificate goes to BBKZ

PM Thomas with the e-mail those certificates should be sent to. Good job everyone :)

We have just updated the Vintage Victorian FA Collection to include almost 2,000 downloads and created its unique design too. Victorian is one of our most popular searches at the site, so check out this updated Collection if that's your thing!

Our latest competition gives you the chance to win a pre order of The Sims 3 Collectors Edition as well as a swag bag of Sims booty and TSR Merchandise. All you need to do is browse the site and look for the booty left lying around by the Pirates that visit TSR every day. Check out the competition page for more details.

After a long break, the TSR Newsletter starts rolling out again tonight. With a new design and some different content, this newsletter will initially be rolled out every second month (it used to be monthly). It takes around 3 days for the mailer to send it out to everyone that has the newsletter enabled in their account settings so hopefully yours will appear in your inbox this weekend. If you have a spam blocker and want to receive the newsletter, be sure to allow mail from [email protected]

Recent accusations and the ongoing slander and defamation of TSR have prompted us to take the unusual step of posting a response.

Most of this goes without saying for our dedicated and loyal user base, but for the fence sitters and naysayers, it will no doubt be of interest.

Read our statement...  TSR: Accusations, Lies, Bullying?

You probably saw this coming already, nonetheless it is with great pleasure we welcome the talented b-bettina to the team of FA's here at TSR. Be sure to check out her latest and upcoming creations for some classy styles to wear! Don't forget to give her a warm welcome in her guestbook!

We have just received exclusive community news from Maxoid Drea.  For a limited time TS2 users will be able to retain their usernames on the official site for The Sims 3.

Log in and follow the instructions here:

http://thesims2.ea.com/thesims3-preregister/index.php?languageCode=1

Once this offer expires anyone can grab your username from the official site.  So act now!

A bit late to the party, but here are the winners for February!

1st prize $50 Amazon Gift Certificate goes to Lirunchik
2nd prize $40 Amazon Gift Certificate goes to cathee
3rd prize $30 Amazon Gift Certificate goes to Veronn

PM Thomas with the e-mail those certificates should be sent to. Good job everyone :)

Our 16th Kudos Lottery Draw took place today with 3 winners being lyoung965 who wins a pre-order of The Sims 3, Ashkesidhe who wins a 2 month TSR subscription, and Nan who will receive one of our new TSR 2Gb USB Flash Drives. These are great for storing Sims downloads on, so be sure to try and win one yourself next time!

Thanks to everyone that bought a ticket (or many tickets), and you'll be pleased to know that a new Kudos Lottery has already been posted for you to spend some of your hard earned Kudos points on. Once again we are offering a Pre-Order of Sims 3 so it has to be worth a ticket or 3!

Nursery and toddler items seem to be very popular in our search lately so myself and Tom have spend some time adding to the Nursery Time Collection created by our Featured Artists. While Tom created the artwork for this Collection I have added some 2,500 archive items to the ones published during the original Theme Week.

To view a selection of the most popular creations and to get a great overview of what the Collection has to offer click here, but be sure to check out the whole collection to avoid missing far more great creations!

We are happy to announce the following new Select Artists: b-bettina, iLikemusic640 and Udontknow. Be sure to check out their quality creations and give them a warm welcome to the team :)

We seem to be on a streak this month, welcoming a third new FA. This time it's noone less then the talented wideopeneyes. You've most likely seen her great new build sets lately and there are many more to come. Be sure to give her a warm welcome in her guestbook!

We are always happy to welcome talented artists to our FA team, and ayyuff is no exception! She's a talented lot artist with an eye for details - be sure to check out her latest and upcoming lots. Give her a warm welcome in her guestbook!

We are very pleased to welcome another familiar face at TSR to our FA team. This time it's noone less then the talented Angelamveliza. Please give a warm welcome in her guestbook!

Here are the winners for January:

1st prize ($50 Amazon gift certificate): Elut
2nd prize ($40 Amazon gift certificate): Wideopeneyes
3rd prize ($30 Amazon gift certificate): Perelinka

Big congratulations and well done! :)

Contact Thomas through a private message and provide the e-mail you want the gift certificate sent to.

Hello everyone!

It has been reported a few times already about inappropriate ads that started popping up this weekend. We have recently added another Ad Network to our advertising chain. Unfortunately when adding new networks into the pool we need to weed out the inappropriate ads that slip through the filters (they rarely work).

At this time we are aware of the ads that need to be weeded out and we re working together with the advertising networks to track them down and have them blocked. Thanks for your help finding them.

The results for our recent Yard & Garden Screenshot Competition are now in! The winners have been selected by our moderators and site staff who had a really tough job on their hands with more than 400 entries submitted! Thanks to everyone who took part for helping us to populate the Yard & Garden theme Screenshots database!

Winners and prizes are as follows:

1st Prize: Beautiful Decay by francien (who submitted many potentially wining entries)

• A Pre-Order of 'The Sims 3'
• Apartment Life Shoulder Bag
• Sims 3 T-Shirt (Large)
• Signed Natasha Bedingfield album 'Pocketful of Sunshine' (Sung in Simlish on FreeTime EP)
• TSR Coffee Mug
• TSR 2 GB USB 2.0 Memory Stick
• URBZ 'Sims in the City' Baseball Cap

2nd Prize: Fairy Cove by simonettaC

• Sims 3 'H2goSS' Stainless Steel Drinks Bottle
• Signed Natasha Bedingfield album 'Pocketful of Sunshine' (Sung in Simlish on FreeTime EP)
• TSR Coffee Mug
• TSR 2 GB USB 2.0 Memory Stick
• URBZ 'Sims in the City' Baseball Cap

3rd Prize: Y&G Competition Entry No. 2 by sakravy

• Sims 2 Plumbob Phone Strap
• Signed Natasha Bedingfield album 'Pocketful of Sunshine' (Sung in Simlish on FreeTime EP)
• TSR Coffee Mug
• URBZ 'Sims in the City' Baseball Cap

4th Prize: The Winter Garden by giasims

• 2 Month Subscription to The Sims Resource

5th Prize: Garden-5 by simal10

• 1 Month Subscription to The Sims Resource

Congratulations to our winners! Another screenshot competition will be starting soon with some more great prizes to be won!

We are very glad to welcome a talented artist to our FA team. This time Senemm has accepted our invitation. You can look forward to many more unique creations coming from him in the future. Give him a warm welcome in his guestbook!

Our 15th Kudos Lottery Draw took place today with 3 winners being FrozenStarRo who wins a pre-order of The Sims 3, ShawnettM who wins a 2 month TSR subscription, and RhondaBlonda who is the very first member to receive one of our new TSR 2Gb USB Flash Drives. These are great for storing Sims downloads on, so be sure to try and win one yourself next time!

Thanks to everyone that bought a ticket (or many tickets), and you'll be pleased to know that a new Kudos Lottery has already been posted for you to spend some of your hard earned Kudos points on.

We have finally managed to find the cause for a problem that some users have reported about page 2 being blank.

You can read more about it in the development blog.

As mentioned in an earlier news post, this week EA are hosting a Creator's Camp Event at their studios in Redwood Shores. I will be blogging from the event all week (I actually started already), so if you want to keep up to date on the latest happenings around the Event, Custom Content creation ad general Sims 3 goodness, be sure to keep a close eye on our Site Blog.

Update: We now have a Development Blog for you to track progress of updates and fixes we make based on user feedback.

After more than a year of planning, development, coding and testing, Version 7 is here! The obvious thing is the new design but behind all that shiny glass effect is a host of powerful new features designed to make your experience of the site more productive and fun!

The index page has been redesigned to use Pods to feature specific content. These will feature the best of the current content and showcase many of the features on the site, pulling the latest or greatest news into them for your arrival at the site. The new tabbed browsing allows you better control of navigation and gives us more room to expand which was a key requirement for this new version before the launch of The Sims 3.

Content is easier than ever to find with our powerful new site search with recommendations, better sorting, searching and filtering of content and a new collection of Themes to make it fun and easy to browse particular styles of creations, stories and screenshots. Switching between game content (Sims 1, 2, 3) has been made easier, something we deemed important with the upcoming release of Sims 3.

Browsing the vast databases of over 600,000 creations is now quicker thanks to the table view for downloads, giving you a preview picture and just the basic info you need to browse quickly, loading bigger images in quick loading 'lightboxes' and storing details away on a specific page, only pulled from the database if you need it.

Your personal 'home' at TSR has had a huge overhaul as well. Every member has their own Profile Page which uses the Pod system from the home page. The unique thing here is that you can add, remove and move the pods around to showcase the information you want to at the top of the page. If you are a creator you might want your download archive at the top of the page. If you are more into Challenges, Stories and Screens then put those Pods at the top to show off to your visitors!

There are more unlockable features that you can buy with Kudos too (and more to come after the launch). You can add your own Poll, change the color and style of the page, create a Blog and even install an image gallery which you can expand to host all kind of pictures you want to share with your friendly Sims community!

My TSR and your personal Dashboard are available to you on every page of the site just a quick click away. These allow you to manage your account, add content, check on your guestbook, private messages, feedback and activity statistics.

Speed of use was also a major part of the new design. You will find most images on the site can be viewed full size simply by clicking on them and having them load in a 'lightbox'. These include articles, screenshots, galleries and news posts. Click one of these screenshots to see! New servers and storage space have been installed and backend server optimizations will continue as we balance the load of these as users put Version 7 though its paces.

Now that we have the Version 7 up and running we will continue to develop the new planned features that didn't make it to the first release, so expect the site to grow over the coming months as we gear up for an exciting time with the Sims 3 release and an influx of new visitors to our community. We all hope you enjoy The Sims Resource Version 7!

The Sims Resource Team.

Update: We now have a Development Blog for you to track progress of updates and fixes we make based on user feedback.

Next week (January 12th to 16th 2009) EA are hosting a Creator's Camp event at their studios in Redwood Shores CA. Creators from all around the world have been invited to spend the week exploring and playing with The Sims 3 to create Sims, houses, objects, movies and more. This content will be used to pre-populate the Sims 3 Exchange ready for its February launch.

TSR will be well represented at the event with 8 attendees from our FA's, Submitters and Staff. I will be there, blogging from the event daily, sharing with you all what's happening at the event, what our staff and artists are learning about the game, what they are creating and any other bits of juicy gossip and info I can dig up for you all!

Check back here from Monday onwards to follow the blog and stay bang up to date with all the latest news!

Part of our Version 7 launch includes a new competition with some awesome prizes to be won, things that money can't buy or you wont find anywhere else!

It's easy to enter, just play the game, build a nice yard or garden for your Sims to enjoy and then submit a screenshot to TSR. Check out the Competition Page for the details, and good luck!

With thanks to Moza for helping me set up and test some challenges we have published 4 new ones along with the launch of v7. The Challenge Wizard has also been updated to use the new servers and web pages.

So today we have the Rock God Challenge by Wolfsim68, Moonlight Becomes You by AnnP35803, Foster Home Challenge by cwykes and the Toe Tapper Challenge by SteveB (me). I hope you have fun with them! We have more being processed so we will try and get them up soon.

Go to Challenges...