SimGoodie was a Norwegian-language fan site covering The Sims 2 and The Sims 3 between 2008 and 2011. Run by a teenager named Alexander R. Ahlsen, the site went through multiple failed launches, five scrapped designs, and at least two abandoned side projects before settling into a small but active community hub with forums, member profiles, and dedicated expansion pack coverage. Its archived About page, captured by the Wayback Machine in April 2011, tells the story of how one fan tried to build something lasting in the era before Discord servers and centralized social media swallowed up independent Sims communities.
From Super Sims to SimGoodies
Alexander's first site was called Super Sims. He bought the domain in 2007 and had it running by winter of that year. Counting from that origin, the project was about three years old by the time he wrote the About page. He shut Super Sims down after roughly a year, putting the start of his next project in 2008.
The original plan for what came next was "Sims 3 Goodies," a download site he intended to build with a Swedish collaborator known as Sim-Marcus. That partnership fell apart when Marcus stepped away and Alexander lost contact. He pivoted to SimGoodies with help from Connor Jack of SimOperations, an English-language Sims community site.
Alexander and Connor Jack also attempted a separate English-language download site called Simming Studio. Connor Jack had connections to people who had attended EA's Creators Camp, and they thought the project made sense. It collapsed due to communication problems and a lack of members.
Five designs and a quarter-year of stability
Back on his own, Alexander built what he described as a "fryktelig stygt" (terribly ugly) first design for SimGoodies, spending an entire summer creating info pages. After launching and running the site for a few weeks with a new look, things fell apart and he gave up. When the motivation returned, he went through approximately five different designs before landing on one he could live with. He kept that acceptable design running for about a quarter of a year before beginning work on both InWebDesigners (his Norwegian web design service) and the 2010 redesign of SimGoodies. The 2010 design was the one he said he was most satisfied with, and he hoped it would last through 2010 with some fixes here and there.
The site operated under the InWebDesigners umbrella, where Alexander offered web design services and site refreshes for other projects.
What SimGoodie covered
By April 2011 the site had grown to 96 registered members and maintained dedicated pages for a wide range of Sims content.
For The Sims 2, the site provided coverage of eight expansion and stuff packs: Byliv, Bon Voyage, Forretningsliv, Dyreliv, Ã…rstider, Fritid, Uteliv, and Livets skole.
The Sims 3 section was even more extensive, with pages for Drømmejobben, Luksus og design, Helaften, Full fart, Reisefeber, Lag en verden, Luksus i Det Grønne, and the then-upcoming Generasjoner (Generations), which was listed in the sidebar as releasing June 2, 2011 for PC and Mac.
The site also maintained a Simologi section with subsections dedicated to Forretning (Business) and Sunset Valley, offering gameplay-focused analysis of in-game systems. A separate section covered The Sims Medieval, and the navigation included a dedicated The Sims Medieval Live Stream page, suggesting the site hosted or embedded live gameplay broadcasts of the then-new spin-off title.
Other features included a downloads section for The Sims 3, tutorials (such as a guide on building waterfalls), a community forum, a chat room, and a publication called Sims Journal that was polled for reader interest. The site had a presence on Facebook, Twitter (under the handle @supersims3), and YouTube (as SimGoodies).
A snapshot of pre-platform fandom
SimGoodie represents a style of Sims community building that has mostly disappeared. Independent fan sites with custom WordPress installs, member directories, sidebar polls, and hand-coded navigation menus were how many players found news and downloads before everything consolidated onto Reddit, Twitter, and YouTube. Alexander was clearly young when he built the site, and the About page reads like an honest account of learning web development in public, complete with failed partnerships and ugly prototypes.
The site's last archived posts date to April 2011, covering topics like The Sims 3 patch notes, Mac compatibility issues, and Generations previews. It is no longer active, but the Wayback Machine capture preserves a full picture of what a small Norwegian fan community looked like in the final years before social media centralization reshaped how Sims players connected with each other.
SimGoodie legacy archive (simgoodie.com)