#every cc creator ever: you will have to pay $5 for this

[ackee]

having to become a pirate just to get proper cc for my babies. good lord

#me: raglan crop top ts4 #every cc creator ever: you will have to pay $5 for this #(i am not.) #txt

[yooniesim]

the thing that makes me saddest about trying to find always free creators now is that 90% of the time when I find one they don't stay free. I'm so tired of finding new creators and boosting their work, I mean like people that have like 5 notes max, and then as soon as they get a little traction they suddenly have early access/paywall. that's how prevalent this shit is, it's actually difficult to find people that aren't charging for cc. And I'm talking about new cc creators with barely any experience, not making anything from scratch, doing small edits or recolors or even conversions. posting their first frankenmeshes ever and stolen artwork tattoos and copy pasted moles under $3-5 tiers. or releasing one or two free hairs and then suddenly every new post is early access. I mean, doesn't anybody have any sense of shame with this? do you really think everyone is supposed to pay every person that has ever opened s4s? what the hell has this community become?

#text #ceci speaks #the patreon issue #negative #nonsims

[hood-simz]

Directory📝

→PSA/Intro! (read b4 u have a bitchfit)←

The name is Piqt and this blog is 18+. My playstyle features the lifestyles that stray away from the typical "happy-nucleur-family-in-windenberg" type stuff and instead sheds light onto the other side of the pond. I'm on Windows, play with almost every pack due to a beautiful thing called ✨piracy✨, been in the game since the month it released (in case you need to reach out to someone seasoned for troubleshooting), and am currently using 5+ GB of cc/scripts.

WCIF friendly and I hope I can actually help you in that regard through my shitmix of a folder!

Going forward, since you will encounter content in this pinned post that some in the community have had literal tantrums about, I would like to state ✨EA is a leech, delivers broken content again and again for a loaded price and doesn't deserve your morality✨ and I, as someone who has been pirating since 2005, will keep pirating it's content and advocating for others to do so. In the terms of me sharing my own + others mod folders, I also give 0 fucks about someone losing .3 cents of ad revenue as I believe internet ads are literal acidic dogshit and shouldn't exist.

→Tags for this blog←

#thebuildtag [my own builds]

#thescenerytag [scenery edits]

#thelifetag [portrait/life shots]

#thememetag [meme/shitposts/glitches]

#favbuilds [builds i love by others]

#favcontenttag [content i love by others]

The Masterposts!

◤Anadius's Twitter (site in bio)

→Kinda speaks for itself. Kudus to this guy for his work & time in creating such programs for our community!

◤Blogger who compiles DLC content made BGC by various creators

→An absolute godsend before I got the courage to tell EA to go fuck itself and just rip their entire game + all their packs. These creators are absolutely amazing for doing this♡

◤Sims 4 Mod Manager

→Vital in any scenario when sorting mods/cc due to it's access of all the thumbnails, but you just gotta have this if you're gonna download someone's 50+ GB mod folders like I tend to do. Kudos to this guy as well for an amazing, user friendly program!

◤Sims 4 Price Call Out

→A while back I made a post calling out the insane price EA makes for content that lacks its worth + is almost always broken upon release, leaving us to fix it. This post is updated every few months and is there to show you just how much your paying for assets that lack functionality + are bare minimum in terms of design.

◤Paysitesmustbedestroyed + TS4Rebels

→Both sites hold cc content that is blocked behind paywalls.

◤My personal Mod Folder + recommended/best scripts↓

→*take note as its been a few patches since I made this list and folder, both could be out of date though as of today (04/04/24) it works- check with creator pages/popular conflict detectors if worried*

Mod Folder (5+ GB)

Script List w/ links

•♡•♡•♡•♡•♡•♡•♡•♡•♡•♡

Though this blog is mainly a simblr-story type blog, it will also feature CC I find appealing + reblogs of other simmer's gameplay. If you find yourself ever with a broken game, need to find CC, or just need basic troubleshooting help, shoot me an ask/PM and I'll try my best to help!! Also, though it's pretty abandoned, my older storylines are over on insta @ hoodsimz if you want to check it out

#ts4 simblr #simblr #ts4 #ts4cc #ts4 gameplay #ts4 legacy #sims 4 cc #ts4 story #ts4 cas #the sims 4 community #the sims 4 gameplay #thepinnedposts

[cloverbuilds]

1. I can’t send an ask/DM to this blog and I have a question/wcif. This ‘sideblog’ is meant to be a gallery only. You will only find ‘posts’ in the dashboard view, not on the actual blog.

🍀 Pease send all questions to my main blog @catharsim​​ !! 🍀 

2. How do I navigate the gallery? You can use the arrow buttons to help you. There will be indicators in a white bubble that show whether the lot is Early Access or a Commission. The download links will be updated when it becomes released to the public.

3. In the gallery, it has no download link to houses marked as ‘Commission,’ how do I get those houses? I do not and will not ever post my commissioned houses for public download. They are in the gallery as a portfolio. You may feel free to commission a similar house of your own from me, though! 

4. What are the different tiers of your Patreon? Everything is listed here 

5. How long is your Early Access period? I release my lots 3 weeks early for Patrons. 

6. What is your TOU on publicly released builds? - Please do not claim my builds as your own or reupload. - Feel free to edit my builds to your liking but keep them for personal use only. - Do not use my lots as a base for your own shared builds. - If you'd like me to see you using my lots, tag @cloverbuilds or @catharsim on Tumblr!

1. What is the process like? My process for commissions is as follows: 

You send me a direct message on Tumblr and we discuss what you want. This is when you would show me reference images. if you have a blueprint of the house, that’d be outstanding. It makes it a lot easier on me!

I get to work and may ask questions along the way about general opinions on the house, if any problems arise, etc.

I show you a finished product in pictures of the interior and exterior for approval.

Payment transaction via purchase of a Commisioner subscription on my Patreon. You will be charged the day you pledge and then charged the same day each month. You can end your subscription or change to a lower tier before you are charged again. If you’d like to keep your Commissioner access, you are entitled to one build per month! 

I send the house to you via SimFileShare

2. What is included in the price for a standard commission? The standard pricing of the Commissioner tier is $12. This is for residential homes up to four bedrooms. If you would like to commission a larger build or a community lot, DM me and we can discuss other payment methods like Paypal. 

Do you take commissions for Sims 4? No I don’t sorry. I dont play TS4 enough to be good at building, so I stick with what I know - which is TS3.

Will CC come with the house? I try to use very minimal CC in builds I’ll be sharing with someone else. But the cc I do use will be included in the file because I know how annoying it is to copy and paste links or track it down yourself.

I know there is controversy about this but I don’t have the time to track down every creator’s TOU. Honest to God I’m not trying to make money off other’s creations, I’m just trying to make it easier for people to have access to pretty houses. If someone specifically does not want their stuff included in a folder, feel free to message me and I’ll oblige.

Will your furnish the home for me if I pay extra? All my CC is in .package format and therefore will not transfer with the lot when exported. Tracking down each piece of cc for a fully furnished house is a nightmare even for the most organized person. So sorry, but no.

Are there any rules once I get the build? Yes and no. It’s yours, you paid for it. Feel free to edit it, never use it, burn it down, go nuts. The one thing I ask is please do not reupload it or claim it as your own. I put a lot of time into my builds and I would like credit given where it’s due. Thank you! <3

#faq #commission faq

[szczek]

making a dumb list for myself what id love to see if they ever make ts5 in the future

1. cars are back and either can use them like in ts2 or 3 i won’t complain either way

2. teenagers to actually look like teenagers and have teenage outfits or at least have them filtered outfits

3. can put stairs diagonally

4. more stuff to do in the base game so you don’t have to buy tens of very expensive dlcs

5. ooh maybe a motorbike you can actually use like cars and bike like in ts3

6. actual holidays (tbh idk if there are any in ts4 maybe there are but idk and idk whether you can celebrate them don’t quote me on that)

7. DIFFERENT. HEIGHTS. FOR. ALL. SIMS especially when you give them heels or platforms they need to get taller with those

8. tbh i would love them to consult some people, creators (cc creators or builders) from the ts community like they did with the recent stuff pack that was free OR MAYBE some full collaborations with cc creators that would be so cool!

9. them to actually SLOW DOWN ,take time and don’t churn out dlcs or stuff packs every other few months so there aren’t infinite errors for the game and actually pay properly the people behind this. because this really sucks

10. oh maybe more colour variations, i don’t need the extreme stuff ts3 had but maybe if i can change the frame of the bed and bed covers individually that’d be great.

11. absolutely don’t know what kind of animals are in ts4 currently but if we got like parrots, lizards or snakes etc that’d be cool as well, hamsters.

12. i’m thinking cause the map in ts4 because of it being set in stone xd is more detailed and each residential are has its own stuff but ig being able to make your own lots wherever you are are cool as hell so idk how i feel about this one

13. i do like the more cartoony style ts4 has so i hope they keep that

14. because ts4 is super simplified not like the previous ones so i hope they don’t do that the next time idk

ok so far i have this i might add stuff once i think of something but this is just for funsies and yeah.

#idk idk my mind is full of ts lately k can’t help it

[wildlyminiaturesandwich]

Why I left the EA Game Changer Program

Judging by the state of my inbox, a lot of you want to know what happened that lead to me leaving the Game Changer program and I was gonna write up a MASSIVE text post about it — I still might one day — but honestly... I’m not sure if I could be bothered right now. A lot of things happened, big things and small things, public things and things that took place in the Discord and DMs; all of it absolute bullshit but none of it is anything I want to continue to deal with, which is why I left.

This post still turned out to be quite long so I’m gonna put it under a cut, but if you’re expecting ALL the juicy details, this isn’t it. This is a couple of the major issues but it’s just the tip of the iceberg.

So let me just say, most of the issues can be boiled down to how the program was managed. The program has been slowly declining since SimGuruDrake left and the Community Manager role has kept changing. Say what you want about Drake and her attitude but she was damn good at her job and none of the crap that certain “high value” Game Changers have gotten away with in the past few years would have ever happened on her watch. But I can honestly say the newest Community Manager has been the worst so far.

(I mean, it’s been 5 days since I told him I was leaving the program and he hasn’t replied. I doubt he ever will. I am not surprised, I’m not even disappointed; I’m just annoyed that I was right because this isn’t the first time he’s ignored DMs and I wasn’t expecting any different this time)

Need some examples? We were told in no uncertain terms by the CM that only “High Value” creators (meaning a select group of Youtubers) would ever be given opportunities such as paid sponsorships, event invites and the like because they alone were worth the investment. He also told us that the Game Changer program has “nothing to do with the community”, which is a stark contrast to what most of us were told by the previous CMs and the reason some of us joined the program. And every single time myself and a few other Simblr Game Changers bought up concerns in the Discord about certain things (eg. racism within the program, favouritism, “high value” Game Changers bullying smaller ones, Game Changers acting inappropriately or taking advantage of their titles/power, the insane amount of stress put on us to produce content within such a tight timeframe for early access) we were either told “this isn’t the place to discuss this”, told to “calm down” when we were speaking politely, told to shut up and warned that if we kept going we’d be punished, or just flat out ignored and spoken over.

There were even several occasions where a certain group of GCs (some of whom were mods in the Discord) would provoke one particular Simblr because they knew she would only put up with so much before she would get angry and they hoped she would eventually say something to get herself kicked out. But every single time this happened, the Simblr was the one who was warned that if she kept being “aggressive” she’d be removed from the program. It’s gotten so bad that there are people who are actually scared to speak at all in the Discord because they’re afraid they’ll be removed from the program for having a difference of opinion or not agreeing with the “High Value” people. Honestly, if people knew even half of what was said within that Discord, if they knew how some of their faves behaved behind “closed doors”, they’d be even more disappoint than I am.

So, in conclusion, if you’re a Simblr and you are thinking about joining the program next time applications are open (if they ever are)... Don’t. They don’t care about us, they don’t view us as equals within the community even though Simblrs provide 90% of the CC and mods they use in their games; they never have and they never will. Simblrs have been part of the program for over 3 years and they still don’t even have a way for us to submit our early access content to EA (we have to DM it to the CM who no doubt just ignores it) or accurately measure our ROI, even though several of us have given the CM literal novels worth of information on how it could be done. The only way Simblr GCs have ever been acknowledged was if they started a Youtube channel or collaborated with one of the “high value” creators. Ever seen a single Simblr at an EA event, get a paid sponsorship or even simply get mentioned in a Sims official Twitter tweet? No. Why? They. Don’t. Care. About. Us. 

Honestly, if I knew back then what I know now, I never would have applied for the program in the first place. I could have saved myself years of stress, anxiety, sleepless nights, and tears.

But, if I keep going this is gonna turn into even more of a rant than it already has and that’s not what I want. I just want to wake up every morning not dreading what nonsense is happening in that Discord and how much trouble I’m going to get into for speaking up for those who are too scared. I want to enjoy my favourite game again. I want to enjoy making CC again. I want to feel like a part of THIS community again. Simblr is where I started and where I grew, and though it sometimes can be tough to be here, it’s my home.

Simblrs are just as valuable and important as any other part of the Sims community and no one can take that away from us, not even EA/Maxis.

Just a few things to add...

I have nothing against the “high value” people or any Youtubers. They are just taking advantage of the opportunities given to them, as anyone in their position would. The issue I have is that it’s always them and no one else, but I don’t blame them for that because that’s not their fault.

I’m not going to name names. Sorry, I know some of you want to avoid supporting the people I mentioned being bullies but I left the program to get away from the bullshit and if I name names those people and their fans will come after me and I got enough of that in the GC Discord.

I will still be buying new packs. I love The Sims 4, no matter how much the management sucks, and I’m going to continue to play it because it helps me deal. Even before I became a Game Changer my FAQs page has always said “EA could literally announce a pack called something stupid like ‘Plant  Life’ with just a single ugly little pot plant in it and I would pay  whatever they ask”. If you choose not to support the game anymore that’s great and that’s your right to do so, but please don’t give out to me for wanting to continue to do one of the only things that makes me happy.

I will still be doing reviews of new packs. Just because I’m no longer part of the program doesn’t mean I won’t be giving my opinions of new packs, nor does it mean my reviews are going to change. My reviews have always been my 100% honest opinion and that won’t change. The only difference now will be I don’t get early access so my reviews won’t be up until after the pack releases, but on the plus side, I also won’t have to deprive myself of sleep and run myself into the ground to review an entire pack in less than 24 hours like I had to do many times with early access.

Saying “I told you so” is not helpful at all. I was aware from the start that Game Changers were free marketing, I’m not an idiot. I was just naive enough to think that they treated everyone the same within the program.

I stayed for as long as I did because I was stupid enough to think I could help change things. I thought adding my voice to the ones already trying to change things (who are still there trying now) that together we might be able to light a fire under the CM’s butt and get some changes happening to make the whole program more friendly towards creators from ALL platforms but it’s literally like banging your head against a brick wall. Nothing is ever going to change because they don’t want it to, but hats off to the few people still in there trying; they have way more patience and sanity than I do.

Not all the Gurus are bad. In fact most of them are really great, super friendly and treat everyone equally within the whole community; you only have to go to one of their live streams (on their personal Twitch channels, not the Sims official one) to see that. It’s mostly just the CM who I was referring to in this post.

It’s now been TWO MONTHS and SimGuruFrost never got back to me. I am no longer able to log into the Game Changer Network (the site we use to opt in to opportunities for upcoming games and DLC packs) so my credentials have officially been revoked but the CM hasn’t said a word to me. Even though I know for a fact when other people have asked to be removed from the program he practically begged them to “just take a break and then come back when you’re ready”. Just goes to show, standing up for people and fighting for what’s right will get you nowhere within the program; all they want are yes men.

[murfeelee]

Simblr Asks - TS3

Saw these questions by Teauke on my dash, and y’all know I love talking/ranting about The Sims; let’s go! ^0^

1. how big is your mods folder?

That’s my mods folder with only mods/hacks/overrides; no CAS or build/buy CC installed. It’s a miracle that nothing conflicts, at least not as far as I can tell.

2. how would you describe your style? A sporadic mix of tv/gaming fandom-inspired conversions and recreations, of mostly fanciful and/or cultural themes & genres.

3. What is your favorite challenge? I’m a builder at heart, so I love recreating lots and interiors. Challenges where we find IRL rooms/scenes and remake them in TS3 are always the most fun for me.

4. do you make cc? if so, what kind? I make fanciful & cultural custom content (occult, sci-fi, boho, etc). I make CAS CC sometimes, but I prefer making buy/build CC.

5. what type of cc do you hoard? Not everything, but a lot. As creators retire and links die, I’m even more paranoid than I already was that CC will no longer be available anywhere.

6. what default eyes and skin do you use? I don’t use default-replacement skintones, but I do use Buhudain’s You Are Real mod.

As for eye defaults, I absolutely love Moonskin’s Shiny Glass replacements.

7. how many urls have you had, and what are the meanings behind them? All of my simming URLs on MTS, TSR, the officials, and Tumblr are some variation of my first name, Murfee Lee. Because yes, I am that darn creative.

8. who is your favorite gameplay blog? 9. who is your favorite storytelling blog? Ugh, there are too many good ones out there.

10. who is your favorite cc creator? All of my favorite creators retired years ago: DyM/Hekate999 (fantasy build/buy), Parsimonious (everything), Luna (everything build/buy), Qingshuangtongzi (Asian everything), Amethyst (Asian CAS), Art-Sims (CAS everything), etc. I swear, the day Sandy/ATS3 (everything build/buy) retires is the day I’m having a panic attack.

11. how do you edit your photos? Badly. Tweak the brightness & contrast and call it a effing day.

12. what is the last screenshot you took? It’s a surprise.

13. what do you do when you are unmotivated? I am never “unmotivated,” so much as I am distracted. I think the reason I’ve simmed so long is strictly because I’m always inspired by fandoms. If I get distracted by a tv/game, it becomes my next muse (aka current obsession). It’s not that I get unmotivated to finish the old stuff I pretty much abandon, it’s just that there aren’t enough hours in the day for me to do everything I want. Sometimes I return to older saves/gameplay. Most times I don’t though--unless someone messages me wanting to see it again (and that’s effing rare). 

14. who is your current favorite sim? Sakura and Nasir are my alltime favorite sims. But I must admit that I patted myself on the back pretty dang hard when I created Tsukihime-Sama for my Moon Medicine gameplay. I love every sim I made for that gameplay (which I really need to finish one day, ugh), but my Lunar Moth Goddess? 👌

15. who is your current favorite sim that is not by you? Every sim that @obscurus-noctem​​ is out here sacrificing goats in order to create. It’s just disgusting how pretty everything on their blog is. Those mersims? Those graphics? That editing? Makes me effing sick. 

16. recreate someone else’s sim in your style. I think I saw a challenge like this a few months/years ago, but never did it. But I DID do the Picrew version.

17. do you talk about sims with people in real life? One of my professors plays SimCity. Naturally, we bonded over how wack EA is. ^_^

18. how many of the packs do you own? All of them, except the Stuff Packs. Barring Fast Lane and Movie Stuff, none of the other SPs are worth the price; it’s just build/buy/CAS CC any MaxisMatch creator.could make for free. I’ve always felt that way about SPs, which is why I never bothered with them in TS1 or TS2 either. I will say though, that TS4′s SPs are something else entirely, which brings me to #24 (see below).

19. how many posts do you have on your blog currently? 2764. JESUS.

20. how many drafts do you have on your blog currently? 363. U_U And most of those are CC sets & gameplay posts I never finished.  

21. how many posts are in your queue currently? It’s a secret. ^_^

22. have you ever moved blogs? Never. I never even changed my theme or URL.

23. are you in any sims related discord servers? Yes, the Creators Cave, but I effing hate Discord; it’s just a royal pain to navigate, IMO.

24. what are your thoughts on the most recent pack? (paranormal) Speaking of Stuff Packs!

RANT ALERT!

If anything, TS4′s SPs are doing way too much (adding new gameplay, careers, lifestates/NPCs, lots, etc!? WUT.) Or rather, its EPs aren’t doing nearly enough. I love that TS4′s SPs add meaningful content. But if they’re raising their bar, that means the Expansion Packs need to rise by the same degree, to stay relevant, if anything.

But EA, in their infinite ineptitude, seems to be scaling back with their EPs! Cutting what should be 1 cohesive EP into multiple SPs & GPs piecemeals the content and cheats people out of money, by having us pay more for less! The TS4 SPs do a lot, yes, but now let’s talk about the Paranormal SP for example:

Paranormal Stuff does perhaps the most any SP in The Sims 1/2/3/4 ever has, and has by far the most worth for its money...but at a dire cost:

- the career only has 5 levels instead of 10 (thus being nowhere as deep as TS3′s combination of the Ambition EP’s Ghost Hunter and the Store’s crystal ball--which links with the Supernatural EP’s Spellcasting skill)

the crystal ball is a 1-trick pony

unlocking Bonehilda is tied to grinding skill/career levels, only for her to do EFF ALL once she finally arrives (and her face looks like melted cookie dough WTF)

most of the gameplay is tied to the pack’s new lot/venue

and the ghosts are still meh

So rather than TS4 having an actual Supernatural EP, instead it has the ok-but-disappointing Realm of Magic Game Pack (which I’ve already ranted about), the watered-down Paranormal Stuff Pack, and the INCREDIBLY OP Vampires Game Pack (which I’ve salivated over). That’s already $40--the cost of TS3′s Supernatural Expansion Pack, mind you--but with the glaringly absent inclusion of Fairies, Werewolves, AND Zombies. O_O WHAT THE HELL, EA. To get the full Supernatural experience in TS4 is gonna end up running people not $40, but perhaps DOUBLE, if werewolves & fairies get their own GPs (unless EA waters them down in SPs, which would still be anywhere from $50-60). EA is robbing people blind.

25. how many hours have you played sims? I have no idea, no doubt thousands.

26. if you play gameplay, do you play with mods? See #1 above

27. what’s the farthest you’ve gotten in a challenge? See #3 above.

Thanks for reading!

#simblr #the sims 3 #the sims 4 #ts3 #TS4 #EA you suck #questionnaire #RANT ALERT

[tofiveohfive]

oh my god?????? wowww????? can you do a gif making tutorial pleaseee? (or link it if you’ve already done it before sksjsk) what software and apps do you use? and what tips and advice would you give to a beginner? and also tumblr has some rules and stuff to post right? your gifs are amaaazinggg!!! thank you thank you thank you

oh, boo... thank you so much for the compliments. you’re so kind. i'm gonna be honest with you, though: making tutorials is a huge pain in the ass 😅. i’m gonna answer some of your questions myself, but i hope you'll forgive me for linking you to other people's tutorials that have helped me a lot. 

i use ps cc 2019!

i use KMplayer to screenshot

i use videoder & 4k video downloader to download most of my videos (when it’s a movie or a tv show i usually go looking for the highest quality torrents)

here are a few tutorials:

a friend of mine did this AMAZING, super complete & resourceful tutorial for beginners. it basically has everything you need and more. it goes from downloading photoshop to which tags you should use.

here’s another tutorial made by the super talented @goldenlike​. i’m linking you to second one because you can’t ever know too much & maybe a smaller tutorial will be less terrifying haha

this tutorial changed the way i used to brighten my gifs and i use these tips to this day.

i made this one tutorial once, because someone wanted to know something specific. if there’s anything in particular that you like about my edits, please, feel free to ask (despite my statement above, i would be willing to make a tutorial for something less... broad, yk? fhjdhks)

there are soooo many tutorials out there, and accounts that put these tutorials together. here’s an example. you can find tutorials for pretty much anything you want on tumblr dot com. if you see a gifset/effect you like in particular, don’t hesitate to message the creator asking for more info about the gifmaking process. 90% of the time they’ll be happy to explain it to you.

honestly, gif making is a very personal process. i’ve read countless tutorials since i started, because there’s always a tip you have never tried before. it may work for you or it may not. my main advice would be start out by following one of these tutorials step by step. then, once you get the gist of it and feel comfortable doing the basics, start messing around with any and every thing (i.e.: coloring (this is definitely one of the most personal aspects. what i think is a nice coloring might seem horrible to someone else), saving settings, typography etc). 

as for some tips and advices:

everyone always says this, but it bears repeating: try to always use the highest quality source material you can. it makes all the difference.

learn the RIGHT PROPORTIONS if you’re planning on posting your gifs on tumblr. it makes me want to cry when i see a content creator working so hard only to end up posting their stuff in the wrong size. it ends up looking all wonky 😩

i believe the tutorials above mention the proportions, but, in any case: 540 px width for one gif per row, 268 px for two gifs, 177 px/178 px/177 px for three gifs. the height is up to you!

smart sharpen, exposure/gamma correction, vibrance and color balance are your best friends. i almost never mess with the saturation of a gif, i only increase the vibrance!

if there’s one color in particular that is bothering you, selective color will be there for you.

pay special attention to skin tones: you don’t want anyone to be red as a tomato but you also don’t want to whitewash someone. in my opinion, skin tones are almost always the trickiest part of a gif.

i always add at least one layer of selective color > black > increase black between 5-10, because i think it does wonders for the definition/quality of ur gifs, but that’s just me.

each fandom has its own rules & particularities when it comes to content... one of my main advices would be going to a content creator’s page and take notes on which tags they use to help spread their content and if there’s any apparent rules that the creators follow.

most fandoms have at least one account that helps with spreading content. in the 1d fandom i always tag: #stylesnews #dailytomlinson #stylesedits #tomlinsonedits #hlcreators #hljournal #1dsource and/or #hlsource (depends on what you’re posting. i’m not gonna tag “tomlinsonedits” in a harry gifset haha)

don’t be ashamed to self reblog like crazy 🤪 sometimes the timeline is too chaotic for people to see your creation (especially if you post it amidst a release day, when everybody else is also posting stuff), so you might as well just reblog your own post 2-3 times on the same day, just to make sure.

HAVE FUN!!!!!!!!!!!!! most of all, have fun. try not to stress too much about it. tumblr is a hobby, no one is paying you to create anything, so just have fun with it. gif the stuff you like (it doesn’t matter if a million other people have already edited the same thing), create gifs that look good to >you<, mess around with the settings, allow yourself to be creative and try not to be too discouraged if people end up not appreciating it the way they should. unfortunately, tumblr isn’t too kind to content creators in general, so don’t take it personally, yk?

#i'm almost sure this was no help at all #i'm just rambling nonsense i'm sorry #ask me for anything specific and i'll be happy to help i promise :( #answered #anonymous #GOOD LUCK I HOPE YOU HAVE FUN

[furbyq]

oh my god it’s a bad idea someone has probably already done before with terrible results. but that’s my sim secret, i’m always terrible, so here we go.

when i posted that thing the other day, or last week or whenever, this is the post i wanted to make. i had written most of it and saved it in my drafts, but i thought maybe it wasn’t a good idea. thinking about it today, i’ve realized i don’t really care. i may still delete this post or hide it later, so get your looks in now.

there’s basically 4 hate secret archetypes:

you’re shit

your cc is shit

your sims are shit

and my favorite,

you did this thing unrelated to sims, don’t do that, it’s shit

some people who receive these secrets don’t deserve them. i can’t say whether or not i did, since i am biased, as i am me. but there are a lot of people i’ve seen get picked at who really don’t deserve it and cannot take that kind of rejection from the community. everyone who has ever gotten a hate secret that they felt was unfounded needs to remember: you don’t just have to take shit your entire life from people who treat you like trash. you can also rare back like a horse and hoof them in the face.

so what i’m going to do in this post is go back through all the secrets i have saved that were directed towards me and critique them on how founded they were. and perhaps how nice they looked. 

at the same time, i’m going to tell you exactly what i felt about them when i first saw them and exactly what i feel now. and i may not be very nice. in fact, after having written the rest of this post, i wasn’t nice at all.

chances are, the people who made the secrets did the right thing and stopped following me or looking at my blog a long time ago. and that’s a very healthy thing to do, i’m proud of them. however, possibly, the people who submitted these secrets might be people i know and have talked to, or still talk to. the problem with simsecret is, you never fucking know. maybe i submitted one of these and don’t remember. that’s right, i was me all along.

now, first of all, i must commend this person on making an aesthetically pleasing secret. i mean, the part that they added actually matches my old blog theme a little bit. however, i have to dock points for lack of consistency in that second pooklet. i’m not going to give grammar too terribly hard of a time, because i’m not going to complain about people who may not be native english speakers. i have no way of knowing. but consistency? you get an 8/10.

let me explain you a thing. when a lot of people start posting in any community, it’s easy to be nervous about people critiquing your personal choices. for me, this was a big stumbling block. i emulated pooklet and azaya because their games looked good. they were two people in this community that fanned the flames of my love for ts2 into a fire that will burn for centuries.

this was also when pooklet had just released their lovely templates, which i still use, and they are likely to be the only templates i use until the day that i make my own. milkshape consistency is important to me and diverse facial features are important to me (keep in mind, this was before custom sliders). i would like to think that i evolved as someone who can make sims that look distinctly like my own, despite being based on someone else's templates, but everyone is entitled to their opinion.

nothing is ever going to please everybody. i could release a lovingly crafted piece of cc every day for the rest of my life and someone would complain about me clogging up their dash instead of unfollowing me. but to someone who is new in the community, criticism like this is much more harsh than you may intend it to be and may have an amplified effect. derivation is common in the start of new hobbies, even you probably derived at some point.

the second secret that was specifically aimed towards me is so low effort, i would give it a 3/10. or a 6 out of 9, you somehow fucked it from both ends by making this shit off-center.

first, if you have a similar opinion, you may need to learn the fact that i may prefer to view different things with my eyeballs than you do. since i only have my eyeballs, and not yours, i tend to pick colors i like.

you may think to yourself, “well, why did you make that top area of shirt a different color to the bottom area of shirt??”, and i will tell you, they are not both shirt. the top part is a jacket overlay or some shit. it was a different color on yuxi’s original as well. as for the color choice, i just liked them. especially the middle one, which i tested colors on for half an hour because i knew i wanted to keep that minty jacket and i had already used too much purple.

what does using colorblind as an insult accomplish in this context? you are criticizing something that, if i actually had it, would be a type of disability i could not help. say it’s shit, and say it’s shit to my face so that i know not to share these things with you.

at least use better colors. my colors are notoriously eye-searing but that red is about to give me a goddamn aneurysm. 6/10.

i don’t know how to break it to the original maker of this secret, but much like the tooth fairy does not exist, perfect humans also do not exist. why are you holding me to a higher standard than other people and then discarding me the moment i do something you personally do not like? you liked me. i fucked up. you liked me less than if someone you disliked did the same fucking thing?

in 2015, adfuck was a shitshow, but it is nowhere near the shitshow it is now. i also always provided a secondary link without adfly. i did that shit where i made it smaller for a couple of posts. i did the scum thing. i thought it would be lucrative and help my situation a tiny bit. a dollar earned from adfuck was a dollar i did not have before, and if you’re dying from starvation a dollar will save your life.

the subtext is, if you were afraid of viruses, you should have used the non adfuck link every time. if you were like me, and you had downloaded a thousand things from behind mandatory adfucks with your block disabled before the skipper (the adfly skipper, not like, a sea captain or anything) and hadn’t had a problem, you could very easily toss 1/1000 of a cent to a creator whose work you liked.

my stance on adfucks have changed drastically since 2015. i would never do it again because of its more clear association with viruses and the fact that i do not enjoy knowing that i could’ve made other people’s lives immensely shittier by being complicit in fucking up their computer. but i did do it, and no amount of apologizing is going to change that.

for future record, if you ever find one of my old, reblogged furbyq-sims posts, never click the shortened link. use the non adfuck one. i would have to push link shorteners every single nanosecond of my entire life for it to ever pay anything of substance, and i refuse to promote shorteners anymore. i will never cash it out, so clicking the links is a waste of time. since i deleted furbyq-sims, i cannot edit the links out. do not click them. 

do note that during my run with adfuck, i received 579 total clicks that registered as ‘valid’ or what-the-fuck-ever. those clicks amounted to $1.53 USD. when people use adfucks, be aware that they are doing so to make, probably at most like $5 USD a month if they get thousands of non-blocked clicks. it is the definition of pointless. the danger element is enough to put most people off, the shitty pay should take the rest of them, and yet.

“hey, stop spamming” “hey, to resolve this, spam more” what do you fucking want from me?

again i’m pretty sure this person is not a native speaker, so i’m not going to poke at the grammar more than to mention that contradiction. you got your point across very well. remember to add a white outline to your text next time. 7/10.

let me tell you, desperation will make you do things that may not make sense to anyone else at the time.

think about this: my mom has serious lymph node deficiency that contributes to her getting pneumonia frequently. she’s on an oxygen concentrator at this time. now, oxygen concentrators are the thing that you get when a person needs nearly full-time oxygen. you don’t get a million tanks, you just get a single concentrator, which requires continuous electricity to work. ring ring it’s the electric company, your power is getting turned off tomorrow. you call hospice, hospice is like “well we can get a notice to them in like, two days” so you panic. you scramble for what you believe at that moment is the most important thing, regardless of whether or not you are right.

people who are in need will generally get help to some extent on the internet if they are brave enough to ask. but when it is a dire thing, you will reblog the post as many times as it takes to soothe your profound panic. every time you reblog, maybe one more person will see it. maybe that person will reblog, someone will see that and send $5 your way to help. you have got to keep things like this moving, if you do not ask you will not receive anything and dead posts are as good as not asking.

i don’t mean to sound overly terse, but i do sound that way for a reason, because some things are worth being terse over. and i hope, i hope to whatever deity may actually exist, that you never have to be in that position, where you know exactly why i did what i did. because it means you’re living in hell and it is no place to be.

i know this is an undertale reference of some kind. i don’t understand it, i haven’t played the game. if you’re going to say something mean to someone, maybe you should use your own words instead of formatting cryptic bullshit that includes the word 'garbage’. 3/10.

if you’re going to insult someone, be specific. because when you insult someone, you wield a sword. when i get stabbed, i want it to be a killing blow to my heart and not some lukewarm stabbing about in my midsection. fucking kill me or leave me alone. those are the options, pick one.

people in the sims community make custom content. and some of it is great, and some of it is shitty. and sometimes, both of those things can come from the same person, because everybody in the entire world has off days. i’m not going to say my shit is great, but i have made things i am proud of. proud that i took the time to make something and it paid off, and i realized a creation that would not exist without my existence and efforts. 

other times, my stuff has been shitty. you are not obligated to download what you don’t like, and i’m sorry that me taking up 500 megabytes of the entire internet to host my shit on impacted your life so much back in 2016 or whenever the fuck.

after some angry secrets, it’s good to end on this one. it makes me laugh every time i see it. 9/10.

i’m going to address three points in this picture, but i’m not and have never been mad at this one. whoever made this secret, inbox me. you’re my favorite motherfucker.

when i made the phantom rage skin i had a picture of a man who had very speckled vitiligo saved as inspiration. i lost that picture when i cleared out old files, but this model, genesis castillo, is very similar to the vitiligo pattern that man had. there are a hundred winnie harlow skins. there were none like this where the vitiligo was not evened out with makeup. i then paired tones 1 and 10 and 2 and 8 for contrast, but the 1 and 10 one looks much odder in the low opacity parts, like camouflage, someone said once.

as someone who has a skin condition, i know how emotionally traumatic they are when they change your appearance drastically. i cannot empathize with any traumas of vitiligo that are directly tied to people of color being affected by it because i am not a person of color. 

if i offended anyone who has vitiligo, i am genuinely sorry. my intention was not to make a ‘costume’, it was to make a virtual representation of a type of human being that actually exists. i hope that learning from this experience and using that knowledge to the best of my ability in the future is enough to undo even an iota of damage that was done.

point two, what is wrong with the middle sim? what is wrong with the middle sim? what is wrong with them? they have a mole? they’re wearing two head accessories? what is wrong with them???

point three, the bebebrillit hairline conversions weren’t terrible. fitting shit to the different hairline shape is difficult, so it can lead to some weird edges. at the time i took the previews for the hairlines, i didn’t have a ton of hairs in my folder. i just started doing nouk hairs. i needed to take a picture of the high fashion ponytail, so i killed two birds with one stone. this is not a combo that i played with, thinking they fit together like jigsaw pieces. it was a preview and it even showed that the hairlines did not work with every hair.

also,

there was a mythical 8th secret (yes, there were actually fucking 8 of them, i’ve averaged 2 hate secrets a year which i consider a life achievement). it was a picture of my first ts4 skinblend with the word “hideous” or “this is hideous” or some shit on it. it had the word hideous in it. that secret was deleted before i could save it, but i still remember it. and i can’t even be mad, i mean, they’re right. 10/10. best secret. it wasn’t a secret at all.

i actually can’t remember why it turned out so shiny, i think it’s because there were like no skins close to what i wanted and i tried handpainting before i knew how to.

in conclusion, please, in the future... stay salty, stay mean, continue hiding behind anonymity, but either grow a sense of humor or commit to what you’re doing instead of hurling balls of infernal bitching gently at my face. 

#negativity // #questionable ideas #i felt like using an inspirational quote on the header #do you like it

[adatedreference]

On the Creation Club and Boycott

So I just made this (rather long) post to make arguments against the Creation Club to someone on r/Fallout and I felt it should be shared here too. I’ve done some minor editing to make it less direct but anyways, here goes:

I know there are people who rather foolishly moan and complain about DLCs and increased base-game costs but those gripes are mostly foolish; a game can be a Complete Experience and still have room for DLC to add things and increased development costs are a real thing hat effects Devs. But those aren’t the issues that effect the Creation Club, as much as people like to bring them up as a response to the criticism against it... and unfortunately as much as some people against the Creation Club bring up just the idea of DLC in general as an in issue with the Creation Club. But here are some of the many real, critical issues with Bethesda’s Creation Club:

The Creation Club is Bethesda leveraging the passion and effort of the Community for its profits and its benefits with almost no benefit coming back to us. Mods keep the Game alive and kicking for years after its Market Expiration because people can keep coming back to get some new content they'd always hoped for — usually for free, sometimes with the option to contribute specifically to the creators of the content. Bethesda is taking the fact that the Community undertakes these projects of passion to squeeze more money out of the players for things that would all but certainly be made anyways.

Pricing. The Creation Club is priced very wrong. See I really want the faction paint jobs for the weapons, especially the Minutemen ones because I'm a Settlement (Over)Builder and the Minutemen are the epitome of that. Let's say I determine that I would spend money on this mod? Well it's not worth its current cost ($1.33) to me, it's worth maybe $0.25, $0.50 at most but that's not at all what they're asking. I'm not miserly about spending money on these kinds of things, look at General Dave's Wasteland Walls; I quite like Evil Viking and when he announced the project, I decided I should start start putting my money behind what he does and have given him $5/month ever since. Name an appropriate price or ask me the right way and I will pay, ask too much of me and you lose a potential customer.

The Creation Club is not the product we were sold. When they talked about the Creation Club their marketing campaign painted great, vast swathes of content made at a quality just below the studio's own and more ambitious than most mods normally could be. The Creation Club can't facilitate files that large, hell Better Breezehome for Skyrim — which is a phenomenal mod despite being fairly small — is either too big or at the very upper bounds of what they could manage. They sold a product that promised things like Beyond Skyrim Bruma but in reality can only deliver us Better Blade of Woe — Better Blade of Woe is nice but if you're going to make me choose one, well I can deal with a named Orcish Dagger thank you.

Its implementation. Do you know anything about how Creation Club files are downloaded? If you do, me mentioning it should make you cringe, if you don't (or you're someone reading this argument who doesn't because I'm not just framing this discussion for the person it's directly a response to) well... I have some shitty news for you. So the way it works is that Bethesda downloads all the files with every upload and then just puts up a pay-wall for the content in your game. For some that might not seem terrible at first glance but look at it another way: Content you may not want, that you might protest/detest, that you may never elect to pay for will take up space on your SSD/HDD no matter your objections for as long as you decide to keep the game installed.

The Mods are coming out in a way that is very different than what most of us long-term Modded Gamers are use to and, I would argue, certainly not for the better. Creation Club mods hit the CC when they are finished and bug free. Cool. Now what makes that substantially different and worse than Classic Mods from the nexus? Well looking again at the Faction Weapon Paint Jobs — because I want this mod and so I'm going to pound on this drum til the skin tears — on the CC at release it is and will only ever be 10 weapons. On the Nexus it would probably launch at about 5 Skins and then over the course of a couple of months to a year it would expand to cover all but a few of the more unique weapons from Vanilla (like the Broadsider). It would also likely be quite modular, with editions to include paints for Various DLC weapons, and maybe an extra version that turns down the goddamn American Flags down to a 5 from their current 11, since the Commonwealth isn't the Full USA. And that would all be one single mod. Now look at how sad the CC version looks. Sure it has no bugs but it's also lacking in character or growth, restricted utterly for no reason except to fit into Bethesda's store set up.

It, Bethesda.net and the various fiascos following Bethesda's efforts to both monetize Modding and force its adoption for Consoles (Mods should be on Consoles they (that's Bethesda and Console Devs in general) need to improve the infrastructure for the Mods) are SEVERELY damaging the Modding Community. Look at DDProductions83, FO4's NIF-Messiah; love him or hate him personally, as I understand his personality was not exactly universally acclaimed, he made absolutely amazing mods at an incredible rate even when the tools available to us were middling-at-best. He left the Community because of some of the shady and shitty practices going on in the early days of the Bethesda.net Mods and I mourn that loss deeply. Another example is 5Like, his amazing mod 'Thematic and Practical' is one of the most amazing, if simple, mods ever added to FO4 and was likely to grow even better... and all the baggage tied to the Creation Club left such a bad taste in his mouth that he washed his hands of the project and declared it dead. How much better off would the modding community for Fallout be with those two still working and impassioned over these hobbies of there's? How much, comparatively, have we really gained with such inspired mods as Camo-patterned Pip Boys and Hot Rod Flame paint guns?... You can guess which I'd choose.

So yeah, that's why I personally boycott the CC. I would love to hear rebuttals or things I may not have considered but honestly, This is how I see Bethesda in 2016, licking their lips at the idea of Paid Mods and fittingly this is where I see them by next Summer. Maybe there's a side of this I don't see, and if you think that's the case please make your case — a new perspective on a troubling issue is always welcome. But until something changes, be it my views or their practices, I really want Bethesda to crash-and-burn a bit on this venture — not enough to damage them long term and jeopardize some of my favourite IPs in existence but enough to dissuade them.

#creation club #fo4 #skyrim #skyrim special edition #bethesda #fallout #fallout 4 #The Elder Scrolls #mods #paid mods #paid modding #modding

[sympxls]

TS4 CC Basics 101

😍 😍 😍 😍 “Oooooooohhhhh look at that. That’s perfect/pretty/gorgeous!!! I must have this in my game!!”   

If you are a simmer that uses custom content, you’ve said this at least once. 😋 If you’re like me, you say this at least once a day. 😝 To avoid cc blunders & problems with your game as a result of using cc, below are some things that, I hope, any cc user can find useful. (under a read more due to length)

✪ Right click & open in new tab when following links to download content. Just clicking on a link alone can result sometimes in a ‘not found URL’ or something of that type of error by mistake. 👌

✪ The only file type that should be going into your mods folder (with the exception of MC Command and Whicked Whims files~follow the installation directions given by those mods creators) are .packages. No matter the amount of, or the type of, files a creator included in their .zip folder, .packages are the ONLY ones that should make their way into your mods folder. EVER. Adding unnecessary files to your mods folder results in longer than usual loading times as your game is taking more time to read files it doesn’t needs to work. 👌   

✪ Any folder you download that ends in .zip, .7z, or .rar, should be unzipped, or unpacked, before placing into your mods folder. Most recent computers already come equipped with an unzipping program. If not, or if you prefer not to use what your comp came equipped with, you can download programs like 7zip or WInZip, for free. A google search can be your best friend in this instance for either a program or how to unzip a folder. 👌

✪ Its always a good idea, & safer for your game, if you direct your comp to download files to either your download folder (your PC name > Downloads) or another folder you have specifically for your downloads, & not directly to your mods folder. Its always a good idea to “test” out any new cc you download, be it one day or one week at a time, in order to weed out any cc that isn’t showing up for lack of not downloading meshes that were noted as required, or because it conflicts with other content already installed in your mods folder. Its always a good idea to keep this new or new-to-you content in a testing folder, that way you know exactly where it’s located for easy removal, if need be. If you test out the new cc & you’re satisfied with its performance, you can then move it into your mods folder along side your other installed content. 👌 

✪ Its always a good idea to organize your mods folder. & by organize I mean, categorize your content in some way, shape, or form, so its easy, or easier, to find if & when you need to. Most simmers will categorize something along the lines of how the game categorizes content (ex. CAS vs. Build/Buy, Female clothes vs. Male clothes, Clutter vs. Comfort). Some categorize according to the date they’ve downloaded it. Find a method that works for you & stick with it. It’s never too late to organize your mods folder. 👌

✪ The Sims 4 already comes with a mod folder installed in your game folder (Documents > Electronic Arts > The Sims 4 > Mods), unlike previous versions of the game. & it also comes formatted for you to use subfolders within your mods folder. If it does not, instructions on how to add them can be found in this post here. It comes formatted to go up to 5 subfolders deep, but it’s been found that most content will only work when its 2 folders deep, ex Mods>CC Folder 1. Going any deeper can result in the game being unable to read the content, which results in it not showing in game. 👌 

✪ Take time to read what the content creator is writing in their download post. In it they will, 99% of the time, note if you need anything else for their content to function &/or show in your game. This can range from what pack the content may require, to what mesh is needed for their recolor to show. Please don’t just go and click download all willy nilly. You could potentially be ignoring important information. This is not the case for all content, but it is the case for most. Taking your time to read what is written will pay off. 👌 

✪ Sometimes a contents poly count matters when speaking about loading times & lag experienced in game. Poly count refers to the amount of polygons being rendered per frame. Example of low poly content is mm (maxis match) content, although not all mm content is low or lower poly but most is. Example of high poly count content are some curly alpha hairs. Having said curly alpha hairs in game won’t cause lag specifically, but having said hair on your sim, & every townie, & then they’re all at a place of business together, for example, well you could very well experience lag because of that. High poly build/buy content will also have the same effect. If you have a lot of it in one room or on one lot, then you may experience lag. How do you avoid this you ask? Just don’t use a lot of it at one time. How does one tell what the poly count is? Easiest way to tell if a piece of content is high or higher than usual poly, is to check how big the file is. You can find that by opening up the folder its located in, & in its file size column it will say it, or you can right click on the file, & select properties. It will tell you its file size. You can also check the poly size by opening up the .package with Sims4Stuido & navigating to the meshes tab. Anything above 5-10K polys, or 10K in file size, in my opinion, can be considered high poly. The better your comp is, the better equipped it is in rendering the high poly & the less lag & loading times you should experience. 👌 

✪ When a patch or new EA content is released, your best course of action is to completely move your mods folder, your save folder, and your tray folder out of your Sims 4 folder before making the update. This is to ensure that nothing happens to it, in the off chance that some new or updated code EA releases doesn’t destroy it. The likely-hood of this happening is slim, but to save your self stress & headache, just move your mods folder before an update or install new EA content. After you’ve installed the patch or new EA content, open up your game and start a new bullshit save. You can trash this save once you are done. Its only purpose to verify your game is running smoothly without cc installed. Once you’ve run your game after the update/new content install, & you’ve ensured you can move around CAS &/or any world with a new save, & you have zero problems, you can then exit the game & move your mods folder back & resume your current save. 👌

✪ Once you’ve updated your game, while your testing out the same fresh bullshit save from above, don’t forget to go into the game options & TURN BACK ON YOUR MODS & SCRIPT MODS. If you don’t do this, you will not be able to see your installed cc once you start the game up again with your previous save. If you do forget to do this, & you accidentally save over your old save, you old save will now be cc free, & you’ve ultimately ruined your previous save. 👌 

✪ Deleting your localthumbcache.package (located in your Sims 4 folder) periodically can help in seeing new content that should show in game. The localthumbcache is responsible for storing your thumbnails. It’s perfectly okay to delete this file as a new one will be regenerated once the old one is deleted. Keeping its size at around 80K-100K is ideal. 👌 

✪ Merging cc can help reduce load times & in game lag. My preferred method of merging cc is through Sims4Studio. There’s a video explaining how it’s done here. Its logical to me to merge like items together, but again, stick with whatever system works for you. Its best to keep the pre-merged files amount to under or around 200mb, or you can risk items not showing in game. Why this happens, I don’t know. And always, always, ALWAYS keep a back up copy of whatever content you’ve merged, clearly labeled somewhere (another folder on your comp, a cloud drive, an external drive) if you can, so you know what came from where in the instance that you have to remove from or add to that merged package file. 👌

CC Basics 102 coming soon? Feel free to contact me with any questions, or suggestions. 👍

Happy Simming!

#ts4 #simblr #cc basics 101 #sympxls #tutorial

[makeitwithmike]

YouTube Hacks: 15 Tricks and Features You Probably Didn’t Know About

By Jylian Russell

Like any social media marketer, a big part of your success relies on how well you know the channels you deal with. With social video quickly becoming one of the most powerful ways to engage audiences, knowing how to stealthily navigate video tools can be the difference between making it as a viral star or getting stuck as a social wall-flower.

In this post, we’ll take you through a collection of YouTube hacks and show you how to use these advance features to wow your viewers.

Let’s dive in.

15 YouTube hacks, tips, and hidden features

1. Create links that jump to a certain point in a YouTube video

Have you ever sent someone a video but wanted them to skip forward to a specific point? Like when your boss is interviewed in a clip, or—better yet—to that moment when the infamous Cobra Cat earned its moniker?

Rather than giving your viewer a time to fast-forward to, you can easily create links that automatically jump to the desired point in a video.

There are two ways to go about doing this.

How to use the share button:

Go to the video and click Share (located under the video’s title)

Under the first tab that pops up (also called Share), check the box beside Start at and enter the start time you want

Or to simplify things, just pause the video at the start time you want and YouTube will autofill the field for you

Shortly after entering your Start time, you’ll notice a little tag added to the end of the video link denoting your start-time. In the example above it’s ?t=1m41s. Copy the link and share it.

Image via YouTube.

How to copy the video URL at current time:

Pause your video at the specific point when you want it to autoplay and right-click on the screen

From there a pop-up box will appear listing several options

Click on the Copy Video URL at Current Time choice

Your time-specified video link will then be copied to your clipboard for sharing

From there, anytime someone opens your link they’ll be taken straight to Cobra Cat’s moment of glory

Image via YouTube.

2. See the written transcript for any video

YouTube automatically generates transcripts for every video created on its platform. For the busy social media marketer, there are tons of ways that this function can come in handy—like when you want to pull quotes from an interview or convert a video’s script into written collateral.

How to do it:

Go to your video and click More under the video’s title

Select Transcript from the drop-down list that appears

Transcript not an option? That means the creator has hidden it

The full transcript will appear below the video.

Keep in mind that many video creators don’t edit their transcripts so it might not be perfect.

Image via Hootsuite on YouTube.

3. Improve your video’s SEO by editing or uploading a transcript

Content creators and marketers know that visibility is key. And one of the best ways to improve visibility is through search engine optimization (SEO), which will get your content to appear higher up in online search results.

An easy way to optimize a YouTube video for search engines is by adding a transcript to your video’s description field.

How to do it:

To do this, go to your video on YouTube and click on the Subtitles/CC icon beneath the play button (“CC” means closed caption). You’ll then be prompted to set your language—set yours to your video’s language. Next, you’ll be given four ways to add subtitles or closed captions to your video by:

Uploading your transcript as a file. Google (YouTube’s parent company) gives a good breakdown of what types of files you can upload.

Typing or pasting in your video’s transcript where subtitle timings will be automatically set.

Typing in your subtitles or closed captions while you watch the video.

Paying a professional service to transcribe (or translate) your video for you. To learn more about this service check this resource post out.

4. Share and collaborate on playlists

Adding playlists to your YouTube channel is a great way to help your viewers find and share your videos. Activewear retailer Lululemon uses playlists to sort their videos by a number of categories—including product type and region—making it quick and easy for their fans to find videos of their interest.

Image via Lululemon on YouTube.

How to create a playlist:

Click on the Video Manager icon located above your banner on your channel’s main page

Next, click on Playlist on the left-hand sidebar and then on New Playlists on the top-right side of the page

Give your playlist a title

Check to make it public

Hit Create

Presto bismo, you’ve created your first playlist

To add a video to your playlist, you can go about it in two ways—either while you’re watching it or while you’re in your Playlist page.

How to add a video while viewing:

Simply click the Add To icon located under the video’s play button

Select the playlist you want from the drop-down menu

How to add a video from the playlist page:

Go to the specific playlist you want to add to

Click Add Videos at the top-right of the page

From there you’ll be prompted to add a video via one of the three methods: by video search, by URL, or by one of your existing YouTube videos

Choose the option you’re after and hit Add Videos

Image via YouTube.

Now to get real fancy—you can also invite friends and other viewers to collaborate on your playlists.

How to invite users to collaborate on playlists:

Go to your Playlists page

Select the playlist you want to add people to

Click-on the Playlist Settings icon (located to the right of your Playlist’s thumbnail)

On the next window that appears, click on the Collaborate tab

Turn the Collaborators can add videos to playlist option to on

Copy the link that’s generated and send it on over to your collaborators

Anyone who receives your link will now be able to freely add and modify videos within that playlist

Image via YouTube.

5. Save videos to watch later

Ever found yourself deep down a research rabbit hole when an amazing video catches your eye? Rather than lose your focus, wouldn’t it be great if you could earmark it to watch later. Rest easy, social media friends. Now you can with YouTube’s Watch Later feature.

Similar to Facebook’s Save Video feature, YouTube’s Watch Later feature makes it easy to save videos on the fly for a later viewing.

Image via YouTube.

How to add videos to Watch Later:

Simply click on the Add To icon under the video’s play button (just like when adding a video to a playlist)

Select Watch Later from the pop-down box

To view your saved videos, just go to your YouTube’s homepage (click on the three horizontal bars at the top-left of your page to get to it) and choose the Watch Later field

Image via YouTube.

6. Boost engagement by adding a card to your video

In social media marketing, engagement is key to success. It’s not good enough for a fan to see your content, you want them to interact with it too.

Thanks to YouTube’s cards feature, your audience can now easily engage with your videos.

YouTube cards are essentially little pop-up boxes that can be added to your videos to draw the viewer’s attention to another area of interest—like other videos, channels, your website, and even polls. They’re also friendly in both computer and mobile formats.

How to do it:

Click on your channel icon and go to the Creator Studio

From there, click on the Video Manager option that appears on the far left-side of your YouTube homepage

Next, go to the video you want to add the card to and click on Edit

Click on the Cards option that appears in the drop-down menu

Click on the Add Card button and select the type of card you want to add—you’ll be given a list of options

Once you’ve created your card, you’ll able to move it to the spot you want it to appear in the video

Image via YouTube.

7. Add an end screen to promote your other videos

The longer you can keep your viewers engaged the better chance you have at driving home your campaign. A great way to do this on YouTube is through end screens. Not sure what we’re talking about?

End screens are images that appear during the final five to 20 seconds of a YouTube video. They’re used to promote other videos or content.

You’ve likely seen many of your favorite musicians use them to draw you to their other songs—like the one placed at the end of LP’s Tightrope video.

Image via LP on YouTube.

How to do it:

Go to your Video Manager

Click Edit next to the video you want to modify

Pick End screen & Annotations from the drop-down box

From there you can experiment with how you want your end screen to appear by:

Adding an element: Select the element you want to add (you can choose four) and click Create Element

Importing from the video: Simply copy the end screen from another one of your videos and import it into your existing video

Using a YouTube Template: Google provides a series of end screen formats that you can use to help build your end screen

8. Create a Custom YouTube URL

You’ve worked hard to give your fans a seamless experience across all your social media channels and YouTube should be no different. Now you can make your channel easy to remember with a customized URL. These can incorporate your company, campaign, or product name. We’ve kept it simple at Hootsuite by going with: https://www.youtube.com/hootsuite

Of note, not all channels are eligible for a custom URL. To be eligible, your channel must:

Have over 100 subscribers

Be at least 30 days old

Have an uploaded photo as your channel icon

Have uploaded channel art.

Learn more about YouTube’s URL eligibility requirements, on the platform’s help page.

If your channel meets the eligibility requirements, you’ll see a URL eligibility prompt listed in your Advanced account settings.

Important to Note: Make sure that you’re 100 percent satisfied with your customized URL name before saving. You won’t be able to make any changes to it once it’s created.

How to do it:

Click on your Settings icon on your YouTube page and click Advanced under your account name

Next, you’ll see a You’re eligible for a custom URL prompt (only visible if you’re channel is eligible)

A Get a custom URL will then appear showing the custom URL Google has approved you for

Click on Claim here and agree to Google’s Custom URL Terms of Use

Make sure you’re completely satisfied with the URL (remember you can’t change it) and click Confirm Choice

And just like that, you’ve created a custom URL that your audience can easily reach you at.

9. Add royalty-free sound effects and music to your video

YouTube’s Audio Library is packed with great quality sounds and music. It’s a great resource for any creative looking to add more flare to their videos, and better yet, all files are royalty-free!

How to do it:

To select music or sounds from YouTube’s Audio Library, go to your Creator Studio

Click on Create

Choose the Audio Library from the drop-down

A screen will then appear revealing the bountiful world that is the YouTube Audio Library—music and sounds are organized by tabs at the top left of the screen

Once you’ve found your musical ditty, simply click on the track’s download arrow and save it to your computer for use

Image via YouTube.

10. Schedule a video for publishing later

Maybe your business is ready to upload a series of videos, but you don’t want to bombard your subscribes with a series of updates in a short window.

If you manage your YouTube channel using Hootsuite, you can easily upload video and then save it to publish later.

How to do it:

Watch the how-to video to learn how.

Learn how to get even more out of Hootsuite with free social media training from Hootsuite Academy.

11. Create a fancy photo slideshow on YouTube

YouTube content doesn’t have to be strictly video. The slideshow feature makes it quick and easy to compile photos into a pleasing presentation.

How to do it:

Click the Upload button on the top-right side of your YouTube page (look for the upwards pointing arrow)

A video uploader screen will appear

Click Create under the Photo Slideshow heading

From here, you can start uploading the photos you want from either your computer or an existing Google+ folder

Once you’ve uploaded all your images, click Select at the bottom left of the screen

Drag and drop your images to get them in the order you want and hit Next

You’ll then be taken to a preview of your slideshow set to YouTube’s default settings—all of which you can easily adjust

Now to add some audio to really jazz up your slideshow—pick a track from the audio library located under Audio

Want things kept silent? Simply select No Audio to play your slideshow without music

Once you’re happy, just hit Upload and wait for YouTube to process your slideshow

To learn more about YouTube Slideshows, check out this resource page from Google.

Image via YouTube.

12. Create a live stream straight from YouTube

Got a webinar or presentation coming up that you’d like to live stream? Brace yourselves, you can do it straight from YouTube.

Big brands, like learning experience company Mindvalley Academy, have been choosing YouTube for a while now to stream their flagship events as an easy way to interact live with their global audiences.

Image via Mindvalley Academy on YouTube.

How to do it:

Before you start, YouTube will ask you to check that your channel is verified and that you’ve been free of live stream restrictions for the past 90 days.

Once you’ve enabled the above, you’ll have two options to set-up your live stream: Stream Now and Events. Begin by going to the ‘Upload’ button on your YouTube homepage and click Get Started under the Live Streaming section.

Image via YouTube.

From there you’ll be taken to the Live Streaming section of your Creator Studio.

How to Stream Now:

YouTube will automatically default to the Stream Now option—the easier to use of their live streaming set-ups.

To get your Stream Now started you’ll have to first download and set-up an encoder. Google provides more information on setting up and using the encoder.

Image via YouTube.

How to use YouTube Events:

YouTube Events gives you better overall control of your live stream than the Stream Now option. With Events you’ll be able to set your privacy options and start time, enable backup streams, and create multiple simultaneous live events.

To get started, click on the Events tab in your Creator Studio and fill in the required details under the Basic Info tab.

For more detail on setting up your Events stream, have a look at this Google resource.

13. Upload a 360-degree video on YouTube

YouTube 360-degree videos have exploded in popularity since their debut in 2015. Big brands and celebrities alike are using the feature to produce some truly breathtaking videos. Just take a look at this vertigo inducing video from Yves Saint Laurent.

But you don’t need to be a big fancy brand to share your 360-degree content. With the right equipment and a bit of technical know-how you too can awe your audiences with an immersive video experience.

To get started, you’ll first need to acquire a camera with 360-degree functions. Currently, Google is compatible with three models:

Ricoh Theta

Kodak SP360

IC Real Tech Allie

For the technical nitty-gritty on getting your 360-degree video set-up and published, check out this Google resource page.

14. Watch ad-free and offline videos with YouTube Red

Can’t stand those ads clogging up your YouTube viewing experience? Well there’s a way to banish them from your life for good with subscription service YouTube Red.

Much like Google Play or Spotify, YouTube Red gives you an ad-free video and audio experience for a small monthly fee (currently $9.99). Better yet, you can save those videos to watch offline—goodbye boring in-flight entertainment!

15. Watch a ‘safer’ version of YouTube with YouTube Kids

Worried about what videos your munchkins have access to at home?

With YouTube Kids you can control what they see with ease. Unlike the standard YouTube, Google built the kid version using filters to weed out any non kid-friendly content. Oh, and it’s totally free!

To get started, simply download the app (it’s Android and iOS friendly) onto your child’s device. Once downloaded, you can further define your child’s viewing experience by setting-up how long they’re able to view at a time and determining if they can freely search for content.

And that’s it.

Hopefully these 15 YouTube hacks and tricks will set you off on the path to an even richer YouTube experience. For tips on building your YouTube channel’s profile, check out our post on 11 Smart Ways to Promote Your YouTube Channel.

Use Hootsuite to easily manage your YouTube presence. From within the dashboard you can schedule and publish videos, engage your following, moderate comments, and discover other YouTube content with keyword search streams.

Get Started

The post YouTube Hacks: 15 Tricks and Features You Probably Didn’t Know About appeared first on Hootsuite Social Media Management.

from YouTube Hacks: 15 Tricks and Features You Probably Didn’t Know About

#YouTube Hacks: 15 Tricks and Features You Probably Didn’t Know About

[wildlyminiaturesandwich]

It’s time we talk about SimsDom again.

Most of you probably already know who and what Simsdom is but for those that don’t, Simsdom (or SimsDomination) claim to essentially be a CC finds website, which in essence I suppose they are... But don’t get your hopes up for a Lana replacement because they are SO much more than that. And not in a good way.

I know this is an old subject, and most people probably thought it was all over and done with, but Simsdom is still around and what’s worse is that I’ve noticed a growing trend among my fellow Game Changers who create content for Youtuber and Twitch/Mixer of promoting the site by using it to do CC shopping haul videos and streams, which is encouraging their viewers to use Simsdom. I’m not going to name names or point fingers but it made me realise that maybe some people don’t understand just how bad Simsdom is for the community in general, but especially for the amazingly dedicated CC creators of Simblr. And it’s just so disappointing to see people that some many in the community, including myself, look up to promoting this garbage site!

If you’re curious to know why this is a problem, I’ll explain under the cut. If not, keep scrolling... But don’t say I didn’t warn you.

If you visit the Simsdom website (which I’ve purposely not provided a link to because you absolutely shouldn’t visit it) you’ll notice a whole bunch of custom content is available there, more than likely you’ll even find quite a bit from some of your faves like @peacemaker-ic​, @nolan-sims​, @storylegacysims​, @crypticsim​, @renorasims​, @savvysweet​ and MANY more. My stuff is even on there as well and if you’re a creator, the chances are high your stuff is too; whether you want it to be or not.

But don’t be fooled, myself and most of the other creators whose content appears on their site did not give permission for our content to be shared on there. In fact, most of us have specifically asked Simsdom to remove our content from their site. I say “most” because there are some people who willing uploading their content there (god knows why). The easiest way to the tell the difference is to look at who posted the content. If you see this:

That content has been shared by a bot, without the creator’s permission and more than likely against their many requests that Simsdom NOT share their content. If it says the name of the actual creator instead of “Exchange”, that creator uploaded it themselves.

You might also ask why anyone would care if their content was shared on a CC finds blog, after all, it means more traffic to our blogs and content, right? First of all, whether it brings in more traffic or not, is beside point. These creators have specifically requested Simsdom not share their content and they have been ignored, disrespected, threatened, and harassed. Simsdom claims that their users make up 30-90% of Tumblr creators traffic, but I call bullshit. I check my Google analytics every single month for traffic coming in to both my Tumblr and Blogger from Simsdom and I can tell you that LESS THAN 1% of the COMBINED TOTAL traffic from BOTH BLOGS comes from there. And when you understand how they operate, you’ll understand why that is.

- UPDATE -

In reference to Simsdom’s response to this post, they linked 5 creators that they claim meet their crazy statement that their site provides creators with 30-90% of their traffic. So I just thought I’d point out some interesting facts I noticed while looking at those sites.

One of those sites is dead; literally, it doesn’t exist anymore, if it ever even did. Another, @simiracle​, is a fellow Game Changer who reblogged this post, so I’m guessing they don’t have support there. And the other 3 are alpha CC creators, none of whom have ever uploaded any of their CC to Simdom, nor have they ever mentioned Simsdom on their sites in any way. However, all three earn money on their own content via either adfly, adsense, patreon, or some combination of the three; my guess would be they wouldn’t be too happy to find out Simsdom is making money off them too.

You see, Simsdom might sometimes link back to the original creators site, but often times they don’t. I’ve noticed quite a bit of the content of my own on their site directly links to the file on SimFileShare, completely bypassing both my Tumblr and my Blogger. This might not seem like a big problem, but what about if the creator has put specific instructions, requirements, or notes on the original download page that if the downloader doesn’t read could result in broken/unusable CC, or worse, a broken game?

- UPDATE -

In reference to Simsdom’s response to this post, they linked to SimFileShare’s page on SimilarWeb and claimed that I was lying about direct-linking to my files there because their site does not appear in the list of referring sites. What they failed to mention is that that list only shows the TOP 5 sites that link to SimFileShare regularly. There are still 385 other sites that aren’t shown and can’t be seen without having an account with SimilarWeb. Convenient, huh?

I also said they only direct-linked SOME content. With my content it was only about 4 or 5 things out of the 15 or so they have on their site and I didn’t check anyone else’s stuff but I have heard other creators say the same thing. So of course they’re not going to show up in the top 5 if it’s only SOME links.

But wait, there’s more.

Anyone downloading from their website without an adblocker is forced to wade through potentially harmful ads as well. Notice the blue button that says “download” at the top? That’s not a real download button and if you click it, it will instantly begin shoving pop ups in your face claiming you have a system error or that your local law enforcement agency has detected illegal activity from your IP. Yes, I clicked it. There is nothing of importance left on my HDD (it’s all stored safely on an external drive that isn’t connected to the PC at all) because this drive has been slowly dying for weeks and I’m destroying it tomorrow and replacing it with a brand new one, so I decided to take a chance.

These ads, which are on pretty much every page of Simsdom, are what’s called “Ransomware”, and it’s whole purpose is to distract you with fake pop up “warnings” when you click on it so that you don’t realise it’s actually downloading a very harmful file to your computer in the background. It’s designed to be next to impossible to close the pop ups, so that even if you somehow became aware of the download happening, you couldn’t get past the pop ups to stop it before it’s had time to finish downloading and automatically begin running it’s payload when it’s done.

What payload? That’s the scariest part, you won’t know until it’s too late. It could be something as simple as a trojan that will force your PC to mine bitcoins, which is still harmful because these mining trojans are resource hogs and put a massive strain on your CPU. Or a trojan designed to target and encrypt specific files on your computer (usually sensitive ones) and demand you pay a literal ransom (usually either in bitcoin or pre-paid cash) and if you don’t, your files will either be complete erased or leaked.

Or worse still, it could be something even more sinister such as a key-logger; a piece of spyware that is designed to track and log EVERY. SINGLE. KEY. you touch on your keyboard. So every password you use, every online banking key code you enter, all the conversations you have via Discord, Twitter, Tumblr, or any other form of instant messaging, that fanfiction you’ve been working on that you are too scared to show anyone in case they think you’re a pervert, your credit card and bank account number you use to shop online, what porn you look for, even your Google search history (regardless of if you’re incognito); all of it will be no longer private and in the hands of someone who could use it to steal your identity, empty out your bank accounts, charge thousands of dollars worth of goods to your credit card, or expose every little strange thing you do on your computer that you thought no one would ever find out about, unless you pay their ransom.

Scary huh?

Also notice that those Get Famous recolours I made don’t say that they actually require Get Famous? Why is that a problem, you say? For most people it’s not, you see “Get Famous Recolours” and you automatically know you need Get Famous to use them, but what about people who are new to using CC and don’t know that for my recolours to work you need the pack they came from? Yeh, that’s a problem, because that particular download is one of those ones that leads straight to SimFileShare:

It leads directly to the merged file, which is NOT the only file available for download in that set, just the largest. But no one who finds my content on Simsdom will ever know that will they? Nor will they read the part of the download page that clearly states Get Famous is required to use the recolours.

I hear you saying “But adblockers are a thing”. Yes they are, but that doesn’t solve the issue of them linking straight to the file. And also, here’s what happens when you try to download something from Simsdom with an adblocker enabled:

You’re forced to wait 180 seconds before the download button appears. THREE WHOLE MINUTES in which you cannot move from that page or the counter will stop, and it will only restart when you go back to that page and stay there for the entire three minutes. Even Adfly isn’t that gross.

So, all of that isn’t enough to discourage you from using this vile site you say? Well, let me introduce you to the person/people who run the site. There are plenty of examples floating around Tumblr of how disrespectful, arrogant, immature, and disturbing the owner/s are (just search for “Simsdom” and you’ll see) but here’s just a few posts showing “receipts” of what happened to creators when they ask for their content to be removed from the site: Here,  here, and here.

They have threatened to doxx several creators, tried to blackmail others, threatened to shut down some people’s sites, and even actually refused to remove people’s content unless they say “please”; as though these creators are six year old children who need to learn a lesson for not wanting THEIR content on someone else’s website!

All of this was said AFTER they made a post on their Tumblr saying they would respect creators wishes to not have their content on their site. I myself had a run-in with them as well but I don’t have the receipts because as soon as they finally agreed to remove my content (after almost 4 days of arguing with them and being threatened several times) they blocked me... and they continue to share my content to this day. That’s part of the reason why my motivation to create has been so low lately; I know its just going to end up over there, locked behind a paywall making money for these disgusting people and tricking simmers into thinking they have to pay to access my stuff.

But back to the story! Once they realised 99% of Tumblr creators — the people they get most of their content from — were going to ask to have their creations removed however, they changed their mind and instead started refusing to remove content. In fact, if you go to their website and use the contact form and choose the option “Remove my Content” they literally ask if you are Tumblr creator or not, and if you say you are, this is what you get:

And that “Our Rights here” link? That leads to this nonsense that literally contradicts itself with almost every single sentence:

“Creations can’t be uploaded without the creators permission... but we do not need permission to share your creations” “Feel free to contact us to ask to remove your content... but actually don’t bother contacting us asking to remove your content because we won’t” “SimsDomination is a free website... We don’t steal any content... *literally has other people’s free content locked behind a paywall and charges people membership fees to remove said paywall*”

And as for the EA terms part... I have news for you Simsdom, YOU are the only one breaking EA’s terms of use by putting content behind paywalls. I’m an EA Game Changer, I have actually read the terms of use AND spoken at length on the topics of earning revenue from CC, and why paywalls/memberships/exclusives are against EA’s terms of use with the Sim Gurus, have you? Didn’t think so.

If you had, you’d realise that we are allowed to earn revenue from our CC by having ads on our blogs/sites provided they aren’t deceptive — you know, like that ad with the big blue button you have that shows up on every single page of your site — and don’t lead to anything malicious, which yours do. I clicked several of the ads on your site and they all either lead to disgusting 18+ websites, started producing ransomware pop ups like I described earlier, or tried to download a mysterious file called setup.exe to my computer (which was most likely a trojan as well). We are also allowed to earn revenue via donations and Patreon early access systems provided the content is also made available for free to the general public within 14 days.

We are not, however, allowed to lock content behind Patreon exclusives, memberships and paywalls such as Adfly; which is exactly what you are doing. Like Adfly, you are not only potentially exposing underage children to 18+ content and risking the safety of people’s PCs, but you are also forcing them to wait to click a link and charging membership fees to avoid having to wait to download said content that isn’t even yours; content that you have been asked REPEATEDLY to remove. That is the very definition of a paywall. It is NOT the same as Pinterest or Facebook AT ALL, they might have ads but they aren’t malicious and they do not force people to wait to view content.

- UPDATE - 

In reference to Simsdom’s response to this post, this is probably one of my most favourite Simsdom lies, because it never changes but it’s so easy to prove false! “Users don’t need to pay to download any content and don’t need to wait to download them” Oh really? Shall we take a look at your site on the old SimilarWeb that you love so much?

How strange. If you don’t make people wait, then why do you need adfly? And if no one has to pay, then why do you need premium memberships to get rid of the ads and wait time you don’t have? Odd.

Also, lets talk Adsense. I never said I had a problem with you having ads on your site; I said I had a problem with the TYPE of ads on your site. If you seriously don’t think your ads are in any way harmful, I’d suggest you take another look at your Adsense, because either it’s been hacked or you seriously don’t know what you’re doing. Oh, but that’s right, “Google will never display suspicious ADs“... Mmm hmm, you just go right on believe that. Yeh, it’s definitely not possible for Google to be hacked... Nope, definitely not.

Also, if you use your Adsense revenue to pay for your site.... what happens to the extra? Because based on your SimilarWeb page I can take a rough guess at how much you earn every month through Adsense alone and there’s no way your site costs that much to run. For that matter, where does all the extra revenue from Adfly, Short.st and this mysterious “other” go? And all the revenue you get from your premium subscriptions that you totally don’t charge people money for?...

Is that fish I smell?

You are not doing anyone any favours here, so stop pretending that you’re in this for anything other than money. Stop sharing content you’ve been asked REPEATEDLY to remove/not share and breaking EA’s and many creators TOUs!

If you’ve managed to make it this far, congrats lol I know this has been long and probably boring but thank you for taking the time to read the whole thing. All this post was meant to do was explain why people should not support Simsdom, and why I’m so disappointed in other Game Changers for promoting it, but it kind of got away from me a little.

Oh well, now you know what Simsdom is and why I will NEVER support them or willingly allow my content to be shared on their site. And if you do decide to still use their site, just... please be careful. My content will always be free and safe to download, just like the majority or CC creators here on Tumblr. Don’t pay for something you can get for free from the original source.

Also, if you’re looking for a Lana replacement (aka a good CC finds blogs that isn’t shady af like Simsdom) check out @maxismatchccworld!

- UPDATE -

This isn’t in relation to anything specific, just the situation as a whole. It seems Simsdom has just removed the search box from their website completely:

I’m sure it was totally legit reasons and not at all because they didn’t want anyone searching for their own content on the Simsdom website. Just like it wasn’t for that reason the last time too...

#VERY IMPORTANT #DownWithSimsdom #Boycott Simsdom

[murfeelee]

I just want to speak my piece and voice my hopes & concerns about the ideas for a new Sims Networking site.

Disclaimer: Despite the length of this long effing post, I know absolutely nothing about creating a website, or hosting, servers, or anything like that.

In light of Tumblr’s clear and present determination to kill its own website, many ideas are being proposed about The Sims community starting its own website. This would be a safe haven for simmers, where we can all share our content without fear of overzealous censorship and nefarious politico-economic stunts and power-plays.

Having different simmers presenting different platforms and ideas about how to get a simming network started is great, and I support anyone who pitches an idea. I don’t care who figures it out, just as long as someone does, and it’s good. But at this critical point and time what the community really needs is to not be splintered -- that’s what the problem is: that when Tumblr internally combusts we’ll all mass exodus and go our separate ways (to LJ/DW, Twitter, Blogspot, WP, etc), and we won’t all be in one place anymore. :(

There’s nothing wrong with having multiple simming networks, and having a selection of simmers-only social media outlets, not at all. We do that already, with sites like TSR & MTS, etc, that embrace content from ALL the sims games (1-4, etc), but where different preferences/standards/visions naturally lead to different websites doing their own thing separately.

But I think it’s time we as a community had one main home.

IMO, ideally, it would be one that functions like Tumblr did -- just Better and More Positive. ;) It would not be moderated by admins like the other sims sites, and instead the site runners would be there strictly for site support and maintenance. We’ve been moderating the simblr side of Tumblr all these years pretty okay -- aside from the abuse/neglect of the Tags (which I hope we could come to a more unified system with on a new site).

The new site could have all the image uploading/storage and other features we enjoy (Follows, Reblogs, Likes, Comments, IM, etc) but possibly even with an additional forum aspect, with rich text text threads & private messaging, etc. Is that at all possible?

The forum half of the site could have moderators, if only to keep the threads organized, but there would be none of that censoring crap that gets users warned/banned over stupidness like language, adult content, or my personal favorite: filesharing (especially when cc users rely on WCIFs and reuploaders to share content from dead sites and creators who delete their content for one reason or another).

I’d also love to see a return of more community events:

more Simblreen-like photo prompts & challenges for other holidays & seasons

more creative contests (like the one recreating real movie posters as sims images to get featured as new cc)

more visibility for machinimas (those mofos work HARD)

the return of sims magazines for fashion & builders & whatnot

Age and Adult Content Restrictions

The Sims is a borderline Teen/Everyone/Mature-rated game. It’s got sex and violence and crude humor and weirdness that isn’t really suitable for little kids. It's at each parent’s discretion what their kids are exposed to, but most simmers are either in their teens or older (I haven’t come across any 7 year olds playing this crazy game, at least.) As such, I don’t feel this new site should be censoring/blocking adult content and nsfw. Let the tags do their jobs -- even implement a Safe Mode & parental controls if you have to.

When it comes to what the age restrictions are, can’t y’all just have a captcha or one of those buttons you click that says you’re 13+ or whatever the age needs to be? And there are pretty cool captchas out there, too -- we don’t need something as crazy as what Thaithesims had (for those of y’all who don’t know, it was freaking nuts, trust), but there are others that ask a simple math question, or makes you to click the picture of the vegetable, or some Where’s Waldo looking thing to find all the bicycles or whatever the heck. Y’all’ve seen them, I don’t know.

Again, I don’t even know what goes into making a website, and determining what it can & cant support -- or AFFORD.

And that brings me to Money:

While it’s so exciting and heartening to see different ideas coming out now, honestly, it’s not gonna work when all y’all are all asking for money and donations. That’ll have us scrambling to fund & invest in a million different people’s ideas, until someone gets a site working that we’ll actually use.

Of course we know money is THE issue, and of course websites are Expensive AF™. But it would be more realistic for all y'all to get a site up and running, have us use it and test it out, and once the community gives it our seal of approval, then start doing donation drives to keep the site/servers funded. That’s the way fan-made ad-free sites with adult content like Archive Of Our Own do it; I’ve been subscribed there for years, and they make $100k+ every drive, it’s amazing. Sites like Wikipedia & the Wayback Machine no doubt make more. (Didn’t SimFileShare fund itself to get started? They use ads, though, which might force adult content restrictions like what’s happening with Tumblr.)

I wish I had the disposable income to give to ANY of these fantastic websites that I know and love, just to show my appreciation, but I’m dirt poor, so.... But I just feel that it really shouldn’t be up to users to fund free websites, because that’s hardly better than having to pay for subscriptions to join paid sites. I don’t even like pay for CC, or DLC, or even video games at full price. So any bid for money makes me suck my teeth a bit, frankly speaking.

In Closing:

The Sims community deserves its own space, to freely express ourselves.

The Sims is unique from any other game ever made, because simmers create the stories, simmers create the content, and simmers create the gameplay -- it’s not a linear pre-determined storyline, but a more or less open-ended open-world mechanism by which the gamer decides (and can create) everything from the characters to the plots to the locations.

We’re not just posting pictures on the official forums of our customized Lara, Shepard, Geralt, Arthur Morgan or whoever beating a level or discovering a hidden location. No. We’re creating our own characters and worlds and directives, and sharing art through images, storytelling, and custom content. And we’re sharing a bit of ourselves in the process.

Tumblr used to be the one place we could rely on to embrace our individuality, freedom of speech, agency, expression, and be part of a community that supported us and our content. I don’t want the Sims community to be fractured, and certainly not die out. Y’all have been like family to me, for the 5 years I’ve been on Tumblr, and for almost a whole decade now in the online Sims community -- 2019 will make it 10 years (which is a lot, for an antisocial psychopath like me). If Tumblr fails us, I won’t know where else to go, and it really saddens me. The Sims is a Lifestyle.

So I really hope y’all movers and shakers out there who know about web development can come together, figure things out together, and create a Better, More Positive space for us to enjoy playing and sharing our love of The Sims games.

#simblr #the sims #RANT ALERT #mini rant #murf is a derp

[wdmsolutionsuk]

Stock Photography On Your Website?

When is it O.K (if ever) to use Stock Photography on your website?

Getting great images for your web design can be tough, especially when you’re on a budget. Hiring a professional photographer may be the ideal solution but not everybody has that luxury. Thankfully, all is not lost. Queue – Stock Photography. A good web designer will know where to find stock photography and share this with you.

There are 2 different types of stock image available online. If you’ve never looked before it can seem a little confusing. You have:

Royalty Free Stock Images

Free Stock Images

Royalty free images do not always mean they are free to use. You will often still have to pay to use the image, but you won’t have to pay any royalties to the photographer as they have licensed their image to the supplier/website. This is how websites like Shutterstock operate.

Free images are completely free of any charge. You can use them without paying any kind of license fee.

 However, it’s important to understand that both of the above image options may well have licensing restrictions that govern how you are allowed to use that image. Sometimes you have complete permission to use however you see fit. Other times you may only be allowed to use the image for non-commercial reasons.

For example, If we’re building a website for you and you want to use a stock image for your website, that may be fine. But if you want to use that same image on your promotional flyers you might have to buy a separate licence to do so.

The site you obtain your images from will tell you the terms of the license and how you’re allowed to use them.

Many of the free sites offer complete freedom so you don’t have to worry about licensing in any way.

 DM Compass have put together a fairly comprehensive list (shown below)…

Foter: Foter has 335million frees stock photos. Pictures are divided into the following categories: Abstract, Animals, Art, Building, Business, Celebrities, Education, Fashion, Food, Holidays, Interiors, Nature, Outdoors, People, Religion, Sports, Technology, Vintage

Free Range Stock: FreeRange is mostly utilised for pictures of Food, Landscape, Industry and People photos. You can also find a vast range of Background & Texture pictures.

Gratis Graphy: Graphy offers free high-resolution pictures that you can use on your personal and commercial projects. All pictures are completely free of copyright restrictions

Magdeleine: Magdeleine is a blog that features the best free high-quality stock photographies. On this website, you need to be sure that the image you choose is marked as “public domain” to be able to use it without attribution.

New Old Stock: New old stock offers a great selection of vintage photos from the public archives. It’s the perfect website if you are looking for quality vintage photos for your blog or your social media channels.

Open Photo: Openphoto is a collection of copyrighted photographs (approx 20,000) released under a user-friendly license. You can find beautiful original images by talented photographers on this website.

BucketListy Photo: On Bucktlisty you can find a collection of over 7000+ travel photos from all over the world anyone can use… it’s Pete’s travel blog, a he is a travel filmmaker, a photographer, a digital nomad and a design freelancer.

Pic Jumbo: On Pic Jumbo you can Search and download beautiful free stock photos for personal and commercial use. There are more than 1900 free high-resolution pictures on this website.

Picography: Picografy offers stunning free pictures for everyone to use, the main categories are City Cultural, General, Hospitality, Nature, People, Scenery, Street, Technology and Wildlife.

Pixabay: Pixabay is one of the most used websites on free stock photos. There are more than 1.4million videos and pictures here and it’s one of my favourite websites to use for finding gorgeous pictures for my websites and social media channels.

CreativeCommons: According to Wikipedia, “Creative Commons (CC) is an American non-profit organization devoted to expanding the range of creative works available for others to build upon legally and to share.[2] The organization has released several copyright-licenses known as Creative Commons licenses free of charge to the public.”

Unplash: Unspash has a vast range of high-quality free images and photos you can download and use for any project and no attribution are required for using these pictures. The website claims over 70,000 contributing photographers and generates more than 5 billion photo impressions per month on their growing library of over 509,000 photos.

MorgueFile: MorgueFile is a website database for free high-resolution digital stock photography for either corporate or public use. You can find here more than 380000 high quality, high-resolution photos, free for commercial use and with no attribution required.

Pexels: Pexels offers a vast range of high-resolution photos for your personal or business project. All photos are free for personal and commercial use and attribution is not required. The website is in English and German.

Public Domain Pictures: Public Domain Pictures is one of the best places with copyright free pictures on the internet. Pictures are organised into the following categories: Animals, Architecture, Background, Business, Flowers, Food, Holidays, Illustrations, Landscape, Light Effects, Macro, Nature, Objects, Office, Other, People, Seasons, Sports, Still, Life, Symbols.

Splitshire: Splitshire offers Free Stock Photos for commercial use without copyright restrictions. There are 982 astonishing pictures to choose for your business or personal use, mostly related to Animals, Nature, Landscape and Fashion.

Stock Photos for Free: StockPhotos4free has a huge range of high-quality free stock photos with thousands of pictures all over the world organised in categories like International Location, US Cities, Backgrounds, Timelapse, Nature and Animals, Light and Energy.

Stockvault: Stockvault is a free stock photo community where “photographers & artists can share their own photos and artwork with people from all over the world” They offer thousands of pictures and illustrations of people, animals, buildings and street photography, landscapes, plant & flower photos, objects from computers & electronics to food and jewellery photos.

Getrefe: Getrefe helps organisations and individuals bring ideas to life in a memorable way. On this website, you’ll find high-quality imagery for all your business or personal projects. Perfect for aspiring designers, bloggers and freelancers.

PhotoPin: Photopin is a free tool that helps bloggers and designers find beautiful photos with Creative Commons licensing. Download the photos and get attribution links already formatted for you.

Startup Stock Photos: Startup Stock Photos offers Free photos for “startups, bloggers, publishers, websites, designers, developers, creators”. There are few images for now but it’s a growing website and it’s worth to keep an eye on it.

Every Stock Photo: Everystockphoto is a search engine for free stock photos, offering community features to the stock photography community. Free photos are listed under creative commons, public domain and other free licenses.

Free Digital Photos: On Free Digital Photos you can Download free and premium stock photos and illustrations for websites, advertising materials, newspapers, magazines, ebooks, book covers and pages, music artwork, software applications and much more. All their free images are of high quality, produced by their community of professional stock photographers and digital illustrators.

Image Base: unfortunately it looks like this website is not working anymore :/

Photogen: On Photogen you can search and download quality free, high-resolution stock photos and images of business, industry, concepts, nature, transport, travel, and many others categories. The Photogen free photo gallery is regularly updated with new quality, high-resolution free photos and images.

Public Domain Photos: Public Domain Photos offers 5,000 free stock images and 8,000 free clipart. they have a good selection of “Business People” photos and these type of images are particularly good for business presentations and business plan.

RGB Stock: RGB Stock is a beautiful website with more than 110000 stock photos and stock images online. Rgbstock has a huge number of high-quality free stock photos and dazzling free graphics for illustrations, wallpapers and backgrounds. It’s one on the first website I check when I am looking for free stock images for my clients.

Unprofound: Unprofound is a small website offering royalty and cost-free photography. You can mostly find there some pictures taken by talented photographers and you can upload your photos too and have your own portfolio online.

As you can see there are plenty of places online where you can get images for your website design without handing over your cash. Some of them are great but be careful. There are plenty of stock images (both free and paid) that should never have made it to the screen.

This hilarious article by BoredPanda.com illustrates this point clearly…

The hashtag #BadStockPhotosOfMyJob, originally started by scientists, has been going around and it is a perfect collection of the times when stock photographers clearly had no idea what they were doing. The fails, along with the inherent cheesiness of the weird stock photos and the indignation of those whose jobs are woefully misrepresented, combine for a perfect storm of funny photos!

Scroll down below to check out a list of Bored Panda’s favourite funny stock photos!

#1

#2

#3

#4

#5

#6

#7

#8

#9

#10

So, you can use stock images in your web design but should you?

In truth, there’s really nothing wrong with using stock images as long as you’re a little selective and try to steer clear of bot the boring generic stuff or the downright silly (as we’ve seen above).

Even if you find some really good images for your site, it may be worth taking a little extra time to edit them and make them unique. By giving your images their own style that matches your branding, you’ll stand out from the crowd for the right reasons.

The post Stock Photography On Your Website? appeared first on Web Design & Marketing.

[suzanneshannon]

12 Best Black Friday Deals for Web Developers in 2018

Black Friday is just around the corner! It’s the day considered as the beginning of the Christmas shopping season. In 2018, Black Friday falls on November 23. Companies offer awesome promotional deals on this day in all kinds of industries. The web development industry is no different. In this guide, you can find the best Black Friday deals for web developers. Don’t miss out on them!

1. Elegant Themes – 25% Off All Themes & Free Giveaways & Free iMac Pro

Elegant Themes has prepared for Black Friday with awesome deals. First and foremost, you can get a 25 percent discount off all Elegant Themes memberships. Besides, they are giving away amazing free prizes, including a brand new iMac Pro worth over $5,000.

The Black Friday sale starts on Friday, Nov 23, at 12:00 am UTC-6. New details about the deals can be revealed in every moment. Click for Elegant Themes’ Black Friday deals.

2. Wow Themes – 50% Off All Theme Packages

Wow Themes gives away their full collection of 40+ premium plugins and themes (with an extended license) for only $45. This is 50% off from their regular price.

The Black Friday deal is available from Nov 23, 2018 to Nov 27, 2018. See the details of WowThemes’ amazing Black Friday offer.

3. Adobe Black Friday Special – 25-39% Off “All Apps” Annual Plan

You can purchase Adobe’s “All Apps” annual plan, including the entire collection of 20+ desktop and mobile apps (Photoshop CC, Illustrator CC, Adobe XD CC, etc.), 100 GB of cloud storage, Adobe Fonts and more for a very friendly price.

If you are located in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Brazil, or Japan you can save 39 percent. Click for the details of the 39 percent Black Friday Special deal for this region.

And, if you are located in the Americas, Asia-Pacific or another region not mentioned above you can claim a 25 percent discount of the same “All Apps” annual plan. Normally, the plan is cheaper in these regions, thus the difference in the discount rates. Click for the details of the 25 percent Black Friday Special.

The offer ends in both regions on Nov 23, 2018; don’t miss it out.

4. Designmodo Black Friday Deal – 35% Off All Products

Designmodo provides you with no less than 35 percent discount on all website and email builders. You can save:

up to $105.00 on the “Postcards” template builder,

up to $88.00 on the “Slides” static website generator,

up to $88.00 on the “Startup” Bootstrap 4 builder,

and more.

Besides, Designmodo has also cut prices for all products on Designmodo Market and Job Postings by 35 percent.

See the details of Designmodo’s Black Friday Deal. The offer is available until Nov 25, 2018, at midnight EST.

5. A2 Hosting Black Friday Super Sale – 67% Off Shared and Managed WordPress Hosting Plans

At A2 Hosting, you can grab all shared and managed hosting plans at a 67 percent discounted price. This means you can purchase their most popular “SWIFT” hosting plan for $3.30/month instead of $3.30/month and “3-Sites” managed WordPress plan for $13.12/month instead of $39.77/month.

Besides, their reseller hosting plans come with a 40 percent discount, while you have to pay 17 percent less for their dedicated hosting plans.

The deals are available until Monday, Nov 26, 2018, right from A2 Hosting’s homepage.

6. NameCheap Black Friday’s Game of Deals – Up to 98% Discounts

NameCheap offers unbelievable discounts for the developer community on Black Friday, 2018. You can get:

up to 98 percent off domains,

up to 97 percent off hosting products,

up to 90 percent off security products,

up to 95 percent off private email.

There will be new deals published in every hour, however most will run only for one hour and deals are also limited in supply. You can claim the deals within 48 hours or they expire. You need to be logged in to your NameCheap’s account to participate.

The Black Friday Game of Deals starts on Nov 23, 2018, at 12 AM EST. See the detailed instructions on NameCheap’s Black Friday page.

7. Envato Black Friday & Cyber Monday – 50% Off 500+ Premium Assets

Envato gives you a flat 50 percent discount on 500+ items sold on its sites, including ThemeForest, CodeCanyon, VideoHive, AudioJungle, and GraphicRiver. You can also save 50 percent on Envato Sites’ annual subscription plans and 20 percent on Envato Studio’s custom projects.

The deals run from Nov 20, 2018 to Nov 27, 2018 and are available on Envato’s Cyber Monday page.

8. Elementor Pro Website Builder for WordPress – Black Friday 25% Off

This Black Friday, you can purchase the Elementor Pro website builder with 25 percent off the usual price. If you want to know more about the builder read our article in which we compare Elementor to Oxygen 2.0, another popular WordPress site builder.

The deal officially starts on Nov 22, 2018 and available right from Elementor’s site. The close date is still not known, but you can sign up for an alert that will inform you about all the details when the deal starts.

9. SiteGround Black Friday 2018 – 70% Off All Shared Hosting Plans

You can access SiteGround’s all shared hosting plans at a quite friendly price—with 70 percent discount. This means you can purchase their “StartUp” plan for $3.95/month instead of $11.95/month, their best seller “GrowBig” plan for $5.95/month instead of $19.95/month, and their “GoGeek” plan for $11.95/month instead of $34.95/month.

Don’t forget that the 30-day money back guarantee is still available during the Black Friday sales.

The deals are available right from SiteGround’s homepage (the discounts are automatically applied to the prices), from Black Friday Nov 23, 2018 to Cyber Monday Nov 26, 2018.

10. Bluehost Black Friday 2018 – 60% Off All WordPress Hosting Plans

Bluehost has also prepared with awesome deals for Black Friday. During the special offer, you can get 60 percent off all WordPress hosting plans. The discount plans start at $2.95/month instead of $7.99/month.

The special offer also comes with a free domain, free SSL, 24/7 support, 1-click WordPress install, and 30-day money back guarantee.

The discounted price is available right from Bluehost’s homepage from Black Friday Nov 23, 2018 to Cyber Monday, Nov 26, 2018. You don’t have to use a coupon code, as the special price is automatically applied on your purchase during the period.

11. StudioPress – 20% Off All Premium Themes

StudioPress is the creator of the extremely popular Genesis framework and several premium WordPress themes. New customers get 20 percent off all StudioPress themes, including the Genesis framework and 35+ premium WordPress themes. The deal is available for multiple theme orders.

Besides, existing customers get $100 off the “Pro Plus All Themes Package” in addition to their 25 percent returning customer discount.

As this year StudioPress also celebrates the new Gutenberg editor, the Black Friday season is extended until the end of November (Nov 30, 2018). You can find the deals on StudioPress’ website.

12. MotoCMS – 60% Off Every Website Template

MotoCMS is an easy-to-use CMS and website builder that you can use as an alternative to WordPress. In 2018, they celebrate Black Friday with their biggest sale ever. You get up to 60 percent off their professional website templates that address every purpose and need, including eCommerce, portfolio, and business sites.

The offer is available from MotoCMS’s website template gallery and lasts until Nov 23, 2018.

More Deals

Besides developer-focused Black Friday deals, you can find many awesome offers for devices that are also indispensable in the work of web developers, such as smartphones, laptops, Macbooks, and tablets. Look for the deals on big eCommerce sites (Amazon, eBay, etc.) or directly on the websites of manufacturers (Apple, Microsoft, Dell, etc.)

And, if you’d rather learn than buy in 2018, have a look at our fresh collection of learning resources for front-end developers, too.

12 Best Black Friday Deals for Web Developers in 2018 published first on https://deskbysnafu.tumblr.com/