ARTICLE: Soap Central Acquired By India-Based Absolute Sports For $1.4 Million, Founder Dan Kroll to Exit

[DaytimeFan]

I hope Dan made and retains a fortune with his exit. 

[DRW50]

Thanks @soapfan770 for tagging me. 

I never went to the boards (and yes those MediaDomain boards were a mess too), but as others have said, Dan was very nice in the few times I interacted with him many years ago. None of the ego trips and nastiness of some soap board bigwigs.

I just hope someone will save the recaps and profiles. Much as I complain about the fancruft in the profiles, they are still years of work and are some of the only resources around.

I'd say this is the end of an era, but the era ended a long time ago. Still, it's a moment to mourn, and remember where we came from.

Edited August 2, 2024 by DRW50

[AMCOLTLLover]

Oh no.. what will happen to the recaps? 

[Soapsuds]

I mainly used SOC for the chats which were great and classic. On occasion I'd read the spoilers when I didn't mind being spoiled.

But like I said the boards changed. Great posters left and the mods got nasty. Dan wasn't around much to reign in the mods on the board.

I remember a poster named Indiafan. He was great poster and all around nice guy. He left SOC and went to the GL Buzz boards. I think his name was Trent or Travis. I lost contact with him. I wonder if @Dan knows what happened to him. Once the GL Buzz boards closed he disappeared.

[JWDrama1980]

I have internet archive all the recaps that had valid links for Another World, Port Charles, Sunset Beach, and confirmed all for Passions. I'm currently working on Guiding Light (I'm up to 1999). 

Most of 90's recaps from these soaps were not archive. 

Edited August 3, 2024 by JWDrama1980

[BoldRestless]

FYI, the program https://www.httrack.com/ works very well on Soap Central. I made my own local backup of Y&R recaps, and would advise others to do that for their favorite soap.

 

@DRW50 @soapfan770 @dragonflies @AMCOLTLLover (tagging those who mentioned recaps and archiving, sorry if I missed anyone)

[DRW50]

Thanks!

[JWDrama1980]

Great Program! Thanks so much!

I have finished archiving Guiding Light. I have started on As The World Turns and up to 1998. 

[Maxim]

That's great. Thank you for sharing.

[DramatistDreamer]

It seems like a lifetime ago since I last ventured onto SOC site. It’s almost hard to believe that I once had an account there because I honestly can say that I any connection I had to that message board faded some time ago (I was more of an aficionado of the first Soap City site before Sony bought it and took over).
Like others have said, I guess, the character and storyline archives are important (despite some discrepancies in facts listed in the descriptions) and hopefully those will be preserved, if not on that site, on another, at least.

[Maxim]

God I just opened the main board and saw some of the things that are being written as rules. Words that you can't say, that are not even offensive or anything... And the Mod from hell that has like 1500 visitor messages of people asking her why did you delete this, why did you edit that...

Who lets these people run the board like it's Stalin's Russia... 

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[Manny]

Oh wow! This took me by surprise! I have been saying to myself for such a long time that you never know, maybe one day they will close down SOC site, so better download all those recaps. I did it for some, not for all.. and now we are here...

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But from what I can see, with GH's new layout, the old recaps are still there. So I hope they will remain. 

[BoldRestless]

When I go the GH recaps page, I only get the current ones: https://www.soapcentral.com/general-hospital/general-hospital-recaps

 

I can still access individual year by year pages if I add the year, but I don't see the master index with all the years anymore, which is concerning. 

https://www.soapcentral.com/general-hospital/recaps/1996/ 

 

@JWDrama1980 can you link to the archive page you made? Is it on wayback machine?

[JWDrama1980]

Yes it is, however individual weeks may or may be not archive. 

 

https://web.archive.org/web/20240719121923/https://www.soapcentral.com/general-hospital/recaps/

 

[Meredith]

I've had a love/hate relationship with that website for years.  This was like the straw that broke the camel's back.  You don't know what those people will do with your data. Thank God I never gave them any financial information.