Revision as of 19:48, 4 January 2010

Over the past five years, Delphy has improved, modded, and generally screwed with MTS to bring it to a point where it is largely unrecognisable as a vBB forum. As a result of this, there are a great many nifty features which new, or even very old, members may not be aware of. This article will list those particularly useful features which are often overlooked. For the purposes of this article, the features will be divided into groups roughly according to which "type" of user is most likely to wish to use them - there is, however, some overlap.

Creators

Profiles

Everyone likes a pretty profile, and MTS aims to allow customisation to the point where profiles are close to being individual mini-websites. As such, we have plenty of customisation options for creator profiles. Most of these options can be found under User Links -> Edit Profile, and are only available to uploaders with one or more approved uploads (unless otherwise stated).

• Custom profile title

The first step to making your profile distinctly you-ish is to name it. The custom profile title option is under Additional Information in your edit profile screen, and allows you to set a name which will display in the breadcrumbs - as seen on Numenor's profile, Numenor Moddings.

• Custom styles/colours

Once you have one approved upload, you can choose any of MTS' colour themes to display your profile in, as seen by daysies' use of the Hello Kitty theme. If you have ten or more approved uploads, you can set up custom colours yourself, using hex codes. See here for a screenshot showing which lines in your edit profile options affect which parts of your profile (it's an eyesore, solely for demonstration purposes - please make sure the colours you choose are readable and don't hurt the eyes, or you may find the colours reset.).

• Subdomain

Want to put on airs? MTS provides all creators with automatic subdomains, which lead to their profiles - such as opeu.modthesims.info. Do be aware that the subdomain may not work if you have special characters (@, &, * etc) in your user name.

• Policy boxes

Attaching your redistribution policies to the bottom of all your upload posts is all well and good, but displaying them on your profile is even better. User Links -> My Policies allows you set up preset policies using checkboxes, which will display underneath your downloads on your profile, as seen on EsmeraldaF's profile. If the checkboxes don't go into enough detail, you can also put your policies in the About Me box in your profile options - this displays at the top of your profile, as seen on Lethe's profile.

• Journal

Creators can start journals, which can be used to keep your rabid fans up-to-date between uploads. Journal entries can also be commented on by the aforementioned rabid fans. To start a journal, go to User Links -> Edit Journal; journals can be public, or you can choose which members can access your journal. If you have a journal, it will show up in the Journal tab of your profile, as seen on V1ND1CARE's profile.

• Guestbook

If you have a journal, then you have the option to make a journal post a guestbook using the checkbox on the new journal entry page. This will then show up as a separate tab, for people to leave general comments for you. See it in action on Delphy's profile.

A prettified creator profile.

• 3 Personal Picks

Everyone has a favourite upload of theirs, and you can set up to 3 uploads as personal picks, using the checkbox when you edit an upload post. These will show up above your regular downloads on your profile, as seen on sims2cri's profile.

• Articles

You thought creators are just people who upload, huh? If you have some expertise but don't want to upload here, or if you're an uploader who wants to share their knowledge, then you can post tutorials in the Create forums - as well as being a huge contribution to the site, these will show up on the Articles tab on your profile, seen here on Flabiliki's profile.

Featured Creators

Featured creators are the absolute best we have on MTS - so they get a couple of extra pretties.

• Banner

Featured Creators can upload a banner which displays at the top of their profile, and at the top of all their download pages, such as Fresh-Prince's banner.

• 8 Personal Picks

Featured creators can also choose eight personal picks, instead of the regular three.

Learning to create

The site is ModTheSims, after all - we're all about learning to customise the game exactly to your liking. So, enjoy our collection of resources designed to help you learn to mod!

• Tutorials

MTS is primarily a modding resource, and as such we have a huge collection of tutorials, for all types of Sims 2 and Sims 3 modding - all available on the Wiki. Anyone can post tutorials - simply write your tutorial and post it; either as a thread in the appropriate create forum, or as a wiki article. Adding a tutorial to the wiki is as simple as going to www.simswiki.info/wiki.php?title=Tutorial:YourTutorial, and typing away.

• The Creator Feedback Forum

Two pairs of eyes are better than one, and a few hundred are even better than that. If you've been working on something, and especially if you're planning to upload it, then the Creator Feedback Forum is the perfect place to get comments, tips, ideas for improvement, and constructive criticism from other creators before you upload. A load of experienced modders, keen-eyed downloaders, and moderators frequent CFF - so it's a great opportunity to get your creation absolutely polished to perfection.

• Create forums

If you need help before the polishing stage ("wtf, it's floating six feet above the sim's head!" "Ack, no, it looks like a fricking snowflake, I dunno what's wrong with it!"), then we have an extensive Create section, covering all sorts of modding, where you can get help with your modding mishaps, or advice when you're stumped. The various Create forums are found in the Create menu on the navbar.

• #create and #ts3mod

If you've never used our live chat, do so now! In addition to a social channel for general chatter, we have two modding channels - #create and #ts3mod. #create is a great place to hang out if you're a modder, to trade pics of and suggestions for your latest project, get inspiration, take part in mini-contests, and generally have fun.

If you're a more advanced modder for TS3, dealing with file formats, C# programming, and the like, then you may find a place to bounce ideas and figure out the latest EA travesty in #ts3mod. Be aware - this channel is for very advanced modding discussions, usually about writing new modding tools and the like; for chat and help on the subject of normal modding for TS3 - meshing, texturing, building, sim-making, etc - you want to be in #create.

Finding content

Sim and lot creators in particular will know well the pain of trying to find exactly the right bit of content for a project. But all is not lost!

• Content Lists

It's exactly what it says on the tin. The Content Lists for Sims 2 and Sims 3 list custom content from all over the community, grouped by theme. These are incredibly useful for finding just the thing you need - and if you know of a great site or download which should be on the lists but isn't, just add it!

• Hair gallery

There's a huge amount of hair out there, and sim creators will know well how impossible it may seem to find just the right hair for your sim. Thus, we have the Hair Gallery: a gallery of all sorts of hairs from some of the best-known, and less well-known, creators in the community. Sims 3 version coming soon!

• WCIF

Have you seen it, got a picture of it, know exactly what it is - but have no idea who made it or where you can download it? Or are you looking for something very specific, which you can't find anywhere? The Where Can I Find...? forums are for just such a situation; post what you're looking for, and members who spend far too much time downloading stuff will see if they can find it somewhere for you.

Uploading

• Visibility

One of the most attractive features of MTS for creators is visibility. MTS is the most popular site in the sims community, and while we don't have the specialisation that is the forte of some smaller sites, you'd be hard-pushed to find someone in the sims community who hasn't heard of us. Uploading to MTS exposes your work to thousands of viewers every day; there are usually around 2500-3000 people browsing MTS at any one time, and if you have your own website, then downloaders who find your stuff on MTS are in turn more likely to visit your site as well. For those who don't have their own website, MTS is a simple way to upload your work on a free site where you have total control of your content, and which is designed to give the best experience possible for downloaders; without you having to learn html, css, php, or whatever other crazy moon language is used to write websites nowadays.

• Quality Standards

MTS is well known for having high standards of quality, and it's obvious how this benefits downloaders. However, its is also a positive thing for creators; for one there's no chance of quality uploads getting lost in crap, but most importantly high standards encourage creators to improve. At MTS we believe that creators should always be trying to improve their skills, and having such high standards enables us to push creators to do the best work they can - which in turn inspires other creators to push themselves further.

• Picks & Features

One of the ways we try to encourage creators to make awesome stuff is by showcasing uploads that are awesomefab. Featured items are the absolute best of the best, perfectly implemented, or technologically incredible uploads - things that make the mods' jaws drop, and are all hand picked and tested by staff. Picks are uploads which are not quite incredible to be featured, but still pretty bloody excellent; the most popular items on MTS.

• Upload Wizard

One of the most technically remarkable features of MTS is the Upload Wizard. It has been developed over several years to make uploading as straightforward as possible - it gives clear onscreen instructions every step of the way, and if you run out of time, you can save your upload partway through the process and come back to it later via your User Links -> Subscribed Threads.

• Constructive moderation system

Hand in hand with our quality standards and ethos of improving our work goes MTS' moderation system. While we appreciate that sometimes the idea is quite daunting, and that having an upload rejected can be discouraging, we really do fee that the moderation system can help creators tremendously. One of its functions is to catch mistakes or omissions that you may have missed when uploading - the added layer of checking ensures that everything about your upload is perfect when it hits the downloaders. Its main function, however, is to keep a handle on quality: and to make sure that uploaders who have work rejected or who recieve a changes required know exactly what they need to work on. If we have to reject an upload, we tell the creator exactly why it was rejected, so you'll never be left with no idea what's wrong with your work.

• Creator Issues

Usually, if you need to communicate with the mods about your upload in the queue, you can use the text box under the "I'm ready for this to be reviewed by a moderator" checkbox. However, if this isn't possible, or if you have another question about about the uploading process, we have a forum specifically for that purpose - the Creator Issues forum. This forum is private; that is, only you and the staff can see threads you make, so we can discuss issues which you don't want aired in public.

MTS has an advanced download filtering system, to help downloaders find exactly what they're after.

MTS is home to over 100,000 downloads, and while everyone of them is an excellent piece of work, sometimes downloaders want something specific. Not only can creators add keywords to their uploads to help with searching, they can make use of our tagging system - which allows you to describe your upload's basic characteristics in a few checkboxes, which then tie into our download browser filters to make it quick and easy to find, say, realistic binned male hairs for children.

• Thanks/feedback posts

It always make a creator feel great when people thank them for their work, and even better if they go to the trouble of leaving a comment. But with the best will in the world, creators don't always read every "omg, I love it!" - and that means that sometimes comments which point out issues, or suggest improvements, get missed. MTS has two different comment types for this, and as a creator, you can easily switch between viewing only Feedback comments or viewing everything, using the "Hide Thanks Posts for this thread (Show only feedback)" link on the Comments tab of any download. This means that you can still quickly find and respond to questions and problems, even when you don't feel like basking in your own glory.

• Scorecard

Everyone likes statistics, don't they? By clicking on User Links -> Scorecard, creators can quickly see a bunch of neat information on how many thanks and downloads they've received, and when; as well as which of their downloads are most popular, which have the highest thanks to downloads ratio, and a load of other cool stuff. Your scorecard is private, so only you can see which of your creations has been downloaded by 6 out of 10 aliens.

• Modding Groups

Are you working on a project with a group of modders? Or do you just have one friend (boo) who you like to work with? Modding groups are shared accounts which can be accessed by any member of the group, and which allow you to upload, and take credit for, work as a collective - as MaryLou & Numenor do. To make a modding group account, create an account with the name you want to use; then post in Creator Issues with a link to the group account's profile, and to the profiles of all the prospective members. An admin will then set up the group for you.

Downloaders

Download browser

One of MTS' most distinctive features is the download browser - surprisingly, it still runs off vBulletin; it has just had its panties modded off. The browser is designed to be as intuitive and informative as possible; to make browsing or searching for a specific download as easy as possible.

• Game Switcher

Probably the biggest challenge MTS faced in 2009 was the problem of how to integrate Sims 3 functionality into the site, without making the system overly complex or messy. Eventually, the mods thought up a way, and left Delphy to figure out how the hell it could be coded - the final result is a simple system which allows quick and easy access to content for whichever game you prefer.

The first part of this system is the default setting - User Links -> Edit Options allows you to set whether you prefer to see Sims 2 or Sims 3 content by default. Then, if you wish to see content other than that defined as default, you can do so either by hitting Sims 2, Sims 3, or All, in the Downloads menu; or, for a quick switch within the downloads browser, by clicking the game icon in the top right of the browser interface. Seemples!

Once you've chosen your game, you can browse to the type of downloads you're interested in with the "Drill-downs", or sections - these allow you to view anything from all downloads, to just Buy Mode Objects, to just Electrical Objects which are recolours of EA objects; with just a few clicks.

• Filters & searching

Another incredibly handy feature of the Download Browser is the filters system. The filters display a different set of options depending on which section you're browsing - for example, the filters will offer options regarding lot size and number of bedrooms when browsing houses, and options regarding age and style when browsing hair. Filters also allow you to select only new meshes, only recolours, only downloads by one specific creator, only downloads by creators you have set as Favourite Creators - or, on a technical note, only those downloads compatible with the EPs you have set in your User Links -> Edit Profile, all downloads, only downloads made of cheesecake and win, etc.

Filters also allow you to sort downloads by when they were uploaded, when they were last commented on, or when they were last updated - so you can easily spot, for example, when your favourite creators update their downloads.

The Filters are an exceedingly useful system to help you browse only what you're looking for - which is useful on a site with so much content.

The Download Quick Preview lightbox.

• Download Quick Preview

Want to have a look at a downloads details quickly, without loading the download page? Click the thumbnail to bring up Quick Preview, which shows you the upload text and images in a neat lightbox - and if you're interested, follow through to the download page itself.

• Download view

Once you've found a download you're interested in, the download browser view for individual games is, again, designed to provide all the info you need quickly and easily.

Overview tab

The Overview tab provides the uploader's description of the item - which generally includes how it works, what any issues are, and essentially what it is. Required custom content is always easily located, at the bottom of the overview; and if you like an item included in the screenshots which is not part of the download, it will usually be linked in the overview text - MTS requires that creators give credit to those creators whose work is shown in their screenshots.

Download tab

If you've decided that you want to download, or if you just want a closer look at the pictures; the Download tab gives all the included pictures, files, any meshes you need, and the required Expansion or Stuff Packs. Click on the picture thumbnails to see the full sized versions.

Install Instructions tab

The Install instructions tab provides, yes, installation instructions for that specific type of content, in case you need a reminder; plus any custom installation instructions that the creator has specified.

Comments tab

The Comments tab allows you to leave a thanks comment, report an issue, or look through previous comments to see if anyone else has asked a question you'd like to know the answer to already. If you're looking for comments regarding a question or issue, you can filter out Thanks posts using the Hide Thanks Posts for this thread (Show only feedback) link at the top of the Comments tab.

Related Pages tab

The Related Pages tab provides links to any recolours (on MTS) of the download, if it is a mesh; as well as giving links to search for other links with the same tags as the download you're currently viewing. In addition, there is a Recommendations section, which lists other Downloads which are commonly Thanked by downloaders who also Thanked the download you're viewing. Think of Amazon - these features make it easy to find other downloads of a similar style and function.

• Thanking and Leaving Feedback

If you like a download, Thank it! A Thanks button can be found at the bottom of every tab on a Download page, and in the scrolling footer bar - go on, nothing makes a creator happier than someone saying thanks. Of course, if you'd rather say thankyou, rather than just clicking a button, you can do so - post a comment using the Post Thanks button; this will post your comment and add a Thank, under your name, to the download.

If, however, you've a more substantial comment to make - a question, a problem, or a suggestion for how the download could be improved - you can use the Post Feedback option: Feedback posts can be viewed separately from Thanks posts by the creator, so they can easily keep track of all their feedback and, hopefully, respond to it quicker.

Download Quality

• High Quality

MTS is, and always will be, about quality - we pride ourselves on having the highest quality standards of any community site. We have Creator Guidelines, a moderation system which reviews every upload carefully by at least one staff member, and numerous resources to help creators do the best they possibly can. The result of all this is that, as a downloader, you get only the best content on MTS - high quality uploads with clear descriptions and instructions. MTS creators work up rather a sweat to bring you content we're proud to host - which is another reason to say thanks to them frequently. ;)

• Picks & Features

In any artistic or technical venture, some work stands out above the rest. Although all of our content is good stuff, MTS has two specific ways of picking out the absolute best stuff.

Picks are downloads which have, using a super secret algorithm, been determined to be very popular. Picked downloads are downloads which are evidently either very good, or very useful - or potentially both.

Featured downloads are the stuff that makes the mods fall off our chairs and be converted when we see it in the moderation queue. These uploads are, to all intents and purposes, perfect - they've obviously taken a huge amount of care and effort, and the result is fantastic. If a creator's download is Featured, that creator becomes a Featured Creator: signifying that they are making some of the absolute best content around.

• No Pay Stuff!

MTS is, always has been, and always will be 100% free. Although donators get perks, these are pretty insignificant things intended as a thanks - a slightly larger avatar, a pretty icon, a custom title, etc. We firmly believe that charging for hobby content is distinctly unsportsmanlike. As such, we refuse to promote or support pay content - no download on MTS may require pay content, or promote it in screenshots. Pay content may only be used if it is included and the creator allows it - essentially, you will never have to pay anyone to use any of the content available on MTS.

Non-MTS Downloads

As much as we'd love all the awesome content out there to be on MTS, we know that this sadly isn't the case. As such, we have several features specifically aimed at promoting awesome free content from all over the community.

• WCIF

Have you seen it, got a picture of it, know exactly what it is - but have no idea who made it or where you can download it? Or are you looking for something very specific, which you can't find anywhere? The Where Can I Find...? forums are for just such a situation; post what you're looking for, and members who spend far too much time downloading stuff will see if they can find it somewhere for you.

• Finds

Have you found something really neat that you'd like to share? Or are you just browsing for new stuff and new sites? MTS' community Finds system allows members to add and read finds from all over the community - Finds of MTS items are ok, but not too many of them; Finds are supposed to be about the sim content world beyond MTS.

• Content Lists

It's exactly what it says on the tin. The Content Lists for Sims 2 and Sims 3 list custom content from all over the community, grouped by theme. These are incredibly useful for finding just the thing you need - and if you know of a great site or download which should be on the lists but isn't, just add it!

• Content Updates

Do you have your own free downloads site, which you'd like a bit of publicity for? The Content Updates forum is for you - a simple way for creators to promote their site, and for downloaders to find out about new sites they never knew existed.

Keeping track

• Favouriting

Everyone has their favourite creators, and their favourite downloads - and MTS has systems for keeping track of both.

Once you've Thanked a download, the option to add it to Favourites will appear; clicking this link will add the download to your Favourites list, which will display on your profile so others can see what you think is awesome, as well as being listed under User Links -> My Favourites; and will give the creator a fuzzy happy feeling next time they visit their Scorecard.

If there's a creator who consistently churns out stuff you love, you can add them as a Favourite Creator, by clicking the link under the avatar on their profile page. Aside from making the creator feel awesome, this has several useful effects - you can filter the Downloads browser to see only downloads by your favourite creators, and myMTS can display a box showing all your favourite creators' new uploads.

• Creator RSS Feeds

If you want a more immediate method of keeping up with a creator, or if you don't want to use myMTS; you can subscribe to creator's RSS feed using your regular RSS reader - the link can be found on the creator's profile, in the bottom bar of the Latest Downloads box.

Community

In addition to a buttload of awesome downloads, MTS has a friendly and thriving community, which does everything from talking about sims, to debating politics, to sharing artwork - and plenty more. Most of this you can find easily enough browsing the community section, but there a few things which may not be immediately obvious.

Creativity

• Non-Sims Creativity

We may be a sims site, but, as we're forever telling folks who want it {fixed|answered|moderated|slapped|done} nao!!!11, even simmers have real lives. As such, we have sections for totally non-sim-related creative endeavours - be it drawing, painting, photography, poetry, stories, or anything the hell else: the Creative Corner is a great place to post your stuff for comments, help, and general ability to show it to the world. In addition, we have a Roleplaying forum; for those who like to be a superhero over the internets.

• Sims Creativity

Simmers are a creative bunch, and we have a huge Sims Creativity section; covering sim pictures, movies, stories and contests.

• Creativity tab

Chatter

Community sections Social groups Finds & Content updates IRC Yearbook Social networking

The Lost & Confused

Game Help Wiki Tutorials Site Questions & Issues

Everyone

Achievements Styles MyMTS "Share this" Image resizing 100% free New Posts subscription groups Quote hiding Responsive reporting system Tutorials and jazz Friendly mods! Panties Space ponies M&Ms Searching