There are many many hacks and fixes for Sims 2 and part of the joy of playing it can be trawling the fora for improvements to your game. I've collected links to my favourites.
Occasionally with downloaded Community Lots, the telephone can be missing. Maybe it was a custom phone that you haven't got installed... whatever, your Sims are stuck there and all the game will let you do is send them home without saving by exiting to the neighbourhood screen. You don't want to lose all that progress, as they made three friends and proposed to their lifetime love...
Cheat box on, boolprop dormspecifictoolsdisabled false
Now, buy mode should be available. Place a community lot phone, from the electrical section of the menu, and simply send your sims home!
That phone is only there temporarily, so you still need to enter the Community Lot conventionally and place a permanent phone.
I use most of the set of Pescado's mods from More Awesome Than You to modify the Sims' behaviour. More information about how to use these in the readmes and on the forums.
Octagonal Roof from Open For Business Fix by Nahte at More Awesome Than You. Makes the OFB octagonal roofs playable, in my view, by reducing their steepness so they look more "real world" and less "fairy-tale".
Sims2Pack Clean Installer I would say this is essential if you use any Custom Content. You use it not just for installing, but also for checking for duplicates and conflicts.
Sims 2 Hack Conflict Detection Utility "will look for multiple packages in your Sims 2 Downloads folder that modify the same global procedure. If two packages modify the same global procedure, they might very well conflict with each other, causing one or both to break. I wrote this program for my own use after having several hack conflicts. It only finds the possible conflicts. It is up to you to resolve any conflicts that are detected."
Jfade's Compressorizor is great. BUT if you use Simwardrobe's Sims 2 Categorizer and/or Delphy's Download Organizer and also DJs Pets Custom Content Updater with files that ARE compressorized, by you or by their creator, you may experience crashing. As more and more CC files are being compressed using DJS Sims Compressorizer, this is a concern. I like the Compressorizer and so do not use the other programs here.
Sita January 30, 2019