Updates

The Sim Directory is alive after all! After hibernating for a couple of months, the Sim Directory has finally awakened refreshed and reworked.

We are once again ready to accept new listings and modifications. However, you may have noticed that a login is now required to add and manage your listings. This is to help make the task of keeping track of your listings at the Sim Directory easier and more convenient as well as to speed up the approval process on the administration end. The end result is a faster, more efficient, and better resource for the sim community.

I hope you enjoy the new system and I welcome any questions, comments, or suggestions at the Sim Directory Forum.

The Sim Directory was founded as The Horse Sim Directory in the summer of 2005. The idea originated from a want to record and organize the URLs of the various active sale and show boards in all-sim. The idea was molded further by an old, out-of-date directory found on Geocities and the goal of the directory evolved into the desire to help improve the sim community. The Horse Sim Directory first formed as a small site with links added solely by the owner. Shortly after the directory was created a site submission form was added for simmers to submit their own sites to the Directory. Eventually forms to modify and remove listings were also added.

As the site grew in popularity among simmers, it grew larger, and in August of 2006 it moved to simdirectory.com and became a database-driven directory, making the job of updating and maintaining it much simpler. Then in September 2006 the companion site of the Horse Sim Directory was born. The Dog Sim Directory had the same functionality and purpose of the Horse Sim Directory, but catered to the dog sim community.

The Sim Directory Forums were the next addition to the Sim Directory Network. The forums were opened in mid-October 2006 as a place to buy, sell, and show horses and dogs. It also gave simmers yet another venue to talk, advertise, and make suggestions for the Sim Directory. The forum also hosts the Sim Pedigree Project.

At the end of October 2006, in an effort to further improve the simming community, the Sim Directory opened its doors, joining the ranks of other outstanding sim sites by offering free subdomain hosting to as many simmers as the Sim Directory's hosting plan allowed. It is the hope of the Sim Directory that offering this service will decrease the number of sim sites that are plagued by ads and pop-ups, as well as to help eliminate problems with exceeding bandwidth and disk space which are commonly seen in sim.

The next addition to the Sim Directory was the One Class Randomizer, a small PHP program that randomizes and formats show results for posting on boards which use BBCode. The program's source code was also made available to the public so that anyone who wanted to could edit the program to suit their own needs, making holding shows quicker and easier for all. This first randomizer gave way to several more. The Mulit-Class Randomizer, the Ch-RCh-1st Randomizer, the Ch-RCh-3rd Randomizer, the Ch-RCh-TT Randomizer, and the Ch-RCh-TE Randomizer were all made based off of the code of the One Class Randomizer, as were a number of derivatives made by other members of the sim community. All of the Sim Directory Randomizers are available for anyone's use and the code for any randomizer is available upon request.

As the Sim Directory entered 2008 it became quite clear that the Directory would only continue to grow, but the time available to devote to the Directory would only continue to decline. Updates were taking longer and longer to process, and activity checks fell from a monthly task to a bi-monthly chore. Something had to change and so the automation of the Sim Directory began. In April, 2008 the Sim Directory was re-released to the public, now equipped with a login system, users are able to login and manage their own listings from one control panel. For those who do not have their own listings, guests can still peruse the Directory without a login. The Directory also has an administration center which not only makes the tasks of approving listings and conducting activity checks faster and easier, but it allows for the possibility of taking on more administrators to help keep the directory running smoothly.