Dear Members,

Please note that we are currently undergoing some cosmetic changes in addition to our beta test of individual show forums. This includes adding some familiar imagery to some of our most active threads, particularly by adding the show logos and mini-history links to pages where members discuss some of our favorite, but dearly departed, soaps, including All My Children, Another World, As The World Turns, Guiding Light, Loving/The City and One Life to Live, among others. More threads will be updated as time warrants.

I also wanted to take some time to address a few points specifically regarding the Discuss The Soaps forum and the future of the SON Community, which will celebrate its 25th anniversary on Thursday, October 8.

Discuss The Soaps Forum

Discuss The Soaps is far and wide the most popular individual forum on the SON Community, with page views up +9.9% during calendar year 2025 vs. 2024. By comparison, our second most popular forum, DTS: Cancelled Soaps, was up +1.94%, while our third most popular, DTS: Previews & Spoilers, was down 12.29%. However, through the first five months of 2026 (January 1 - May 31), the Discuss The Soaps forum has seen a dramatic drop in traffic, down 30.05% compared to the same period in 2025, while DTS: Cancelled Soaps has dropped 36.09%. This is alarming to me.

I'm aware that our recent, but since solved (right?!?!), login/logout and error 500 max_connections issues may have been a driving force in driving down the numbers, but I still have to look at it holistically. Like the network executives and those in charge of our favorite soaps, past and present, regardless of one's opinion of them, the SON Community has to find ways to keep its engine running, and yes, that includes making changes, or "improvements," though some might not agree on the appropriate term or how it is implemented.

The Future

I have earmarked July 1, 2026, as the first day we will likely no longer use monthly discussion and spoiler threads for the current daytime soaps, though I am open to feedback from the membership on the matter. I will likely create a poll next week to gauge the consensus, if that would be beneficial.

Thus far, I have formally introduced the official Beyond the Gates forum and the official forum for The Bold and the Beautiful, and moved the Daytime Emmy Awards forum under the main Discuss The Soaps forum. Meanwhile, forums for the other current soaps have already been created and are ready to go, but I have not yet made them publicly available. They will be released in the coming days. Until then, the first two forums can be accessed in various ways, including from the main menu on both desktop and mobile.

At any time, a member can create a topic specific to either show by clicking the "Start new topic" button, regardless of where they are in the SON Community, including within the Discuss The Soaps forum. Just make sure to click Continue to begin your posting process.

As part of the newly available Combined Fluid View option, you can now see all posts in the main Discuss the Soaps forum and in the individual forums for each soap without leaving the page.

On desktop, there is an option to view posts from all forums or a specific forum on the right sidebar. This allows those who don't want to see anything posted about a show they don't watch, or who want to view everything being discussed about the current soaps. I have color-coded each show to help identify which forum a topic specifically related to said show is published in, and have also enabled a dark mode/preferred mode option.

To choose to see all forums within Discuss the Soaps, just some of them or none at all, you can do so by simply clicking on the appropriate forum you want to view, again without leaving the page.

On mobile, the same tasks can be completed, though instead of appearing in the sidebar, the options appear at the top of the page with the button saying either Showing topics from all forums or Showing topics from 1 forum, or whichever happens to be your viewing choice.

Keep in mind that your viewing choice will follow you throughout your browsing of the SON Community, so if you don't see an active topic for some reason but you know it's there because you see it under the Recent Posts box on the sidebar, you might need to reset your viewing settings. This can be done by clicking on the Discuss The Soaps forum.

By not selecting a forum, including the Discuss The Soaps forum itself, you might see the forum appear emply like so:

It should appear like this:

or like either of these, depending on your forum preference:

Beyond the Gates example

The Bold and the Beautiful example

When it comes to titling a post, in the past, we required the use of show acronyms. However, with the introduction of individual show forums, this will no longer be required. Your posting within the show forum should be sufficient to let people know what your topic is about. That said, if your thread is published in the main Discuss the Soaps forum and isn't specific to a particular show, you should continue using the expected acronym - BTG for Beyond the Gates, B&B for The Bold and the Beautiful, DAYS for Days of our Lives, GH for General Hospital and/or Y&R for The Young and the Restless - particularly if combining more than one show, or ALL for all shows.

PINNED POSTS / TAGS

A benefit of the individual show forums will be a significant reduction in the number of pinned posts across the SON Community.

Going forward, we will use the tags feature to identify topics that would normally be pinned, including the current discussion threads, and monthly episode counts, among others. We can color-code each tag in our system. Although members were able to create tags in a previous version of our forum software, the current version only allows admins to create tags.

To appropriately tag a post, in this instance SPOILERS, particularly for it to appear similar to the examples below, do as follows:

While making a post, you'll see a box that says Tags

Click the button that says Choose Tag(s) and select the tag of your choice, either by searching or scrolling.

If making a post that is a spoiler, click on SPOILERS

Once this tag is selected, keep in mind it will NOT automatically appear next to your post's title when it's published. Instead, it'll appear below it. To ensure it appears next to your title, as shown above, with my two examples that have ALERT next to them, you should click on the Item prefix: button, currently shown above as None. Select the available prefix, in this case SPOILERS.

Your post will now be tagged as a spoiler for those who want to be spoiled and those who do not. You should also be vague in your title, as has been the case with the DTS: Previews & Spoilers forum, which I'm considering retiring so as to clean up the SON Community by focusing on core forums.

As pointed out by others, a spoiler can still be considered a spoiler even if the episode you want to discuss has already aired in the Eastern time zone. Therefore, if something happened on the show, but it has not aired in the Central, Mountain or Pacific time zones, it should be marked as a spoiler.

GUEST POSTING BEFORE REGISTERING

We have disabled the option for guests to post before registering. This option prevented guest posts from appearing on the SON Community until the guest had registered, but I saw no value in it at all, so I turned it off.

MORE UPDATES TO COME

For now, these are just some of the topics I wanted to address. I will continue adding more in the future as separate posts. In the near future, we will publish clear posting guidelines, FAQs and rules to better support the use of the SON Community.

How exciting! Thanks for the update, Errol.

I love that we can choose which shows go on our feed. I was thinking something like that would be great but didn't even know that was possible, and you already have it set up! 👍

Willing to give it a try, however, I am still trepidatious about the changes being made. But trying to walk into it with an open mind.

7 hours ago, Liberty City said:

Willing to give it a try, however, I am still trepidatious about the changes being made. But trying to walk into it with an open mind.

I actually like the monthly threads to keep up with the daily happenings of the show, so I’m hoping posters will still create them.