Creating a Story Site

Submitted by Chicklet on Mon, 04/26/2010 - 11:31.

You have inspired me to post my own rkc story. I love the way you have your website set up and I hope you will give me some tips.
If you don't mind, I'd like to copy your format, except for the calendar part. I figure if I don't post a calendar I can leave both the exact year and the passage of time ambiguous.
I would like to post my story in chapters, with pictures, with a place for people to make comments at the end of the chapters. I'd also like to string storylines like you do. (Like the Red Boots storyline.) I'm not sure exactly how to do that.
Did you create your whole website yourself? Are you using any special software for it? Did you start it elsewhere? How would you recomend I proceed?

Writing the Story

First of all, thanks. My

Submitted by Lothere on Mon, 04/26/2010 - 12:09.

First of all, thanks. My format -- chapter posts, pictures, comments for each chapter -- is nothing new. Lots of Simmers have taken the blog format and warped it for Sims storytelling purposes. I stumbled across one of those nearly five years ago and the rest is history.

I am a professional software developer by day, so in fact my entire site (except for the forum and the chat) is custom software written by me. That's not as discouraging as it sounds, because I have essentially recreated a blogging platform. It's just that I have certain features that a regular blog software won't give you out-of-the-box, such as chapter dates in the 11th century, or chapters that automatically link up to character biographies.

As far as I know, most people are using Blogger to host their stories, or else Wordpress.com. Some people use LiveJournal instead, but I find LJ to be more community-oriented than "come ye, and read what I have written"-oriented.

Anyway, those sites let you set up a blog for free. For pictures, you have to get a separate account. I believe most people use their Photobucket account for this. (Also free, as far as I know.) Upload your pictures to Photobucket, write your chapter in Blogger, and copy-paste the Photobucket image links into the chapter.

For the storyline feature in particular, you will likely have to do that manually. You might be able to create storylines by putting "labels" or "tags" on chapters, or whatever your blogging-platform-of-choice calls those things. For example, if I were using WordPress I could have tagged all the Red Boots chapters with "Red Boots", and then WordPress would have given me a way to list all the chapters with the "Red Boots" tag.

Or, you can simply create a non-chapter page for each storyline, and manually add links to each chapter in that storyline as you go. If you do it as you go, it's not too much work, I should think.

Hopefully that will be enough to get you started. I don't know how Web-savvy you are. I am probably not the best person to advise you on things like Blogger or Wordpress, and I have never used Photobucket at all, but lots of my readers are using those and might be able to give some tips.

Has anyone seen a "Setting up a Sims Story blog" tutorial out there? That seems like something that should exist, if it doesn't.

Good luck!

Thank you! This willl help.

Submitted by Chicklet on Tue, 04/27/2010 - 12:15.

Thank you! This willl help. I've searched and have not come up with a tutorial. Maybe I need to search with different words.
If you don't use photobucket, how do you get your pics from game to story? I was hoping I could simply open the picture sim file, copy, paste...
How do I get the pics from game to photobucket? Will it be as simple as copy from game and paste?
I'm not a programing guru, but my boyfriend is. However he is not a sims fan. I'd rather hear it from people who sim. If I destroy something in the game, I'll just cry. It took me a month to set up my rkc...it's 8 kingdoms, using the cleaner megahood.
Thank you so much for the free sites. I would rather use a free site than have my boyfriend set one up....mostly because I won't have to wait as long...okay, a little independence thing too. His computer skills were my back up plan.
I have seen other sim stories, but yours is the best. The others I was bored with the story and just looked at the pictures. Yours is novel worthy....but I'd still want the pics, it helps bring the imagination to life.
Yours also has the best format. I can see why you made your own site - I doubt there is anything else quite that good out there.
I will begin writing at the begining of the next round, possibly this weekend.
I welcome all the hints I can get about extracting pictures, and great free places to post.

I don't use Photobucket, but

Submitted by Lothere on Tue, 04/27/2010 - 13:24.

I don't use Photobucket, but I see they have some tutorials up. It looks like it's easy to upload images, as long as you know where on your computer the images are being saved. It's not as easy as copy-paste but it's still pretty easy. You just have to go to their site, log in, and click on the "Upload images" button somewhere. Then follow the instructions.

Once you get the image on Photobucket, there should be a little widget on the page with the HTML code that you need to copy-and-paste into your story that you are writing. Then, when you publish it on Blogger or Wordpress, it will display the images from Photobucket.

I work in basically the same way, except that instead of uploading the files to the Photobucket servers, I have my own server, and I upload to that.

The best thing for you to do is probably just to dive in... create a blog, create an account on Photobucket, and create a test post with some test images. You'll find out how difficult or easy the various steps are, and you'll know what questions you need to have answered. I will try to help but this is new to me too. There are probably some "Help" pages on Blogger, Wordpress, etc., too.

Make sure you post a link to your blog when your story is started! I think we are all on the lookout for more medieval stories.

I will post the link when I

Submitted by Chicklet on Wed, 04/28/2010 - 11:44.

I will post the link when I start posting the story. I think that will be this weekend. Tonight I'm playing the 6th of 8 kingdoms. It's about a week per round.
I will not even pretend that my story will be Lothere quality. Mostly I'll simply be forming a story around what they are doing...a little like how you started.
It will be so nice to be able to blab about what my sims are doing - no one I know plays. Most of the time, people who don't play, just don't get it....
I've tried to explain to my boyfriend that it's like writing characters who come to life, who may or may not do as you direct them...and they aren't aware you are there...

The story of the 8 Kingdoms

Submitted by Chicklet on Mon, 05/03/2010 - 09:42.

The story of the 8 Kingdoms will be posted at 8kingdoms.blogspot.com. If that doesn't work, go to blogspot, and then search for 8kingdoms.
I will be posting the first chapter tonight. The first 3 chapters are played, the pictures all ready to upload. I might post all 3 tonight.
I decided to go with blogspot because it gave me all the information on the features right on the first page with no ads. It even gives me my own web page - but maybe all the blogs do. I haven't used one before.
Wordpress has a nice link where you can start your blog, but didn't say much on the features it has. I didn't want to set up an account, start working on the story, then find out it won't do what I want. I skipped the risk.
I heard great things about xanga.com. Apparently it is much faster to add pictures than it is on wordpress. This site is filled with ads. I find ads annoying when I'm trying to read something on the web.
I just hope my story isn't too, see my picture, and little story. I hope I will get better with it as I go along. If even one person enjoys it, it will be worth the time.

Even if that one person is

Submitted by Lothere on Mon, 05/03/2010 - 09:51.

Even if that one person is you!

Seriously, I worked on my story for almost a year before I advertised it in a forum and got my first visitor. I had fun just telling the story to myself. When I played the Sims I always told myself a story anyway, but it was even more fun to take pictures and write it down.

Help! When I try to upload

Submitted by Chicklet on Mon, 05/03/2010 - 16:57.

Help!
When I try to upload a picture from the game, it's tiny! I thought maybe it was the blog, but I put it in paing, and it's still tiny thumbnail size. If I try to make it bigger, that it's out of focus. What am I doing wrong?

I've learned an important

Submitted by Chicklet on Mon, 05/03/2010 - 17:04.

I've learned an important lesson. NEVER rename the sims pictures! Fortunately I only renamed one, but that one will now only show up as a tiny little thumbnail. I'll see if I can figure out what it was called before and maybe salvage the picture.

I found a page on the EA

Submitted by Lothere on Tue, 05/04/2010 - 10:44.

I found a page on the EA forums that has very good explanations on getting your pictures out of the game folder and putting them to use. The page is here:

The Sims 2 Images - Frequently Asked Questions

It sounds like you might have grabbed the thumbnail picture rather than the original picture. As they explain in the FAQ, every time you press "C" to take a picture, the game saves both a normal size (you can choose the size in your camera options in-game) and a thumbnail-sized picture. Hopefully your original-sized picture will still be there! You just have to look through the pictures to find it.

Hope this helps!

I've worked out the kinks.

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Fri, 05/14/2010 - 08:00.

I've worked out the kinks. My story is up at www.8kingdoms.blogspot.com.
I have 12 chapters up now.

I have tossed out that

Submitted by Chicklet on Thu, 06/24/2010 - 15:29.

I have tossed out that story, it wasn't working well. I have much better story ideas now. This will be different.
After much downloading of cc and mods I have begun a new story. This is more with the spirit of the rkc. I created a neighborhood, and even the downtown and other sub neighborhoods. I downloaded lots and clothes because I'm not good at building or making my own cc.
The new link is www.grunwaldkingdom.blogspot. It's worth it just to take a look at the picture at the top of the blog. It will look familiar to Lothere.
I noticed we were both looking at the Gwrych lots at mod the sims. I used those for the bulk of my lots.

New forum topics

Stephanie
Lady Dora
Finn