New Site Login Details, New Social Channels, Sonic Symphony and More!

It's September! Ah, the unmistakable start of Autumn/Fall, where the leaves start to fall from the trees, coffee shops crack out their pumpkin spice lattes and the cool, crisp breeze of... wait, no that can't be right, we're surely still in the middle of Summer right!?

We're currently seeing a massive heatwave in the UK! 

Well, whatever the weather, I hope you're keeping safe and looking forward to a whole new season of Sonic goodness. It's also time for another Stadium Update! I love keeping you all informed of what's going on with the site, and I hope you guys are all enjoying the newly-integrated site and forums combo!

As it happens, there's actually a fair number of things I realised I need to let you know about, so let's get into it!

Third-Party Login Deactivation

As we communicated way back in July, we have now deactivated the ability for users to register or log into an account on the Sonic Stadium using a third-party service, such as Facebook, Discord or Gmail. We did this for security purposes, protection of spam accounts and due to general unreliability of these third party services.

In order to log into the Sonic Stadium going forward, you must make sure you have a sign-in email address and an independent password that you set for your account. If your account is affected, please use the following steps to rescue your Sonic Stadium account access:
 

• Verify the email address associated with the third party service used to register your Sonic Stadium account. For Twitter/X, Facebook and Discord, this would be the email address assigned to your account at the time of your Sonic Stadium account registration. For Google, this would be your Gmail address.
  
  >> If you are currently logged into your account, you can visit your Account Settings and view the Email Address page to confirm what this email address is. If you are currently signed out of your account, you will need to remember what this email address is. If you can't remember, get in touch with us to verify your account.
   
• Create your independent Sonic Stadium account password by "resetting" it. If you are currently signed out of your account, visit the Forgot Password page and enter the email address you verified in the step above. Follow the instructions to set your password and regain access.
  
  >> If you are currently logged into your account, you can simply your Account Settings and then the Password page to find options to set a password. No logging out necessary!
   

If you have any issues, either in remembering your sign-in email address or in generally resetting your password, please reach out to us using the Contact Form with as many details as possible, and we will try to verify your account and help re-connect you to your account.

As we mentioned in our previous communication on this, this deactivation should not affect your ability to connect a third-party profile to your Sonic Stadium account, nor should it affect your Discord server connectivity benefits (such as auto-server membership and username colours). If this happens to you, please reach out using the Contact Form and we'll try to sort out any issues you have.

I understand that this means that your Sonic Stadium account will be "yet another password" to remember, but there are many secure password manager services out there that can help make this a non-issue for almost all of you. I hope this does not disrupt your enjoyment and use of the forums and site too much, and I apologise for any inconvenience. I'm here to help with any community members with issues, any time!

Community Hive Integration

Those of you who do just like to browse the Sonic Stadium and have yet to be a part of the online Sonic community (hello, by the way!) may notice a new green button when viewing certain sections of the site or forums. Something like the below.

This button links to Community Hive, an independent service that allows users to follow a number of forums and communities across the entire internet and stay informed on their posts and updates. It uses a social media like interface to allow users to 'follow' as many forums and websites as they like, and get a rolling feed of the latest posts on each. It all sort of works a bit like a new-age RSS reader, but specifically for forums and communities.

We have registered the Sonic Stadium on this new service, as an experiment to see how it goes. If Community Hive seems like a service you might want to take advantage of, feel free to head over there and check it out. The service only allows you to follow and receive a feed of posts though, you will still need a Sonic Stadium account in order to interact, post or take advantage of any of the cool features on this website.

New Social Media Channels

With the social media landscape looking more and more unstable these days, where is a Sonic the Hedgehog fan supposed to go to chat with like-minded friends (apart from THE SONIC STADIUM, OBVIOUSLY!)? Well, I wanted to let you know that we now have channels set up across a bunch of new platforms, so you can stay up to date on Sonic News no matter where you decide to settle in to.

Here are our new channels:

• Bluesky: @sonicstadium.org
• Threads: @sonicstadium
• Mastodon: mastodon.world/@sonicstadium
• Tumblr: thesonicstadium

Technically that last one has been around for a million years, but we only just started using that blog again to start sharing our news content. These accounts join our existing Twitter/X, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube channels. Give us a follow, wherever you are!

Incoming Sonic Symphony Goodness!

The Sonic Symphony World Tour will officially kick off next Saturday (16 September) when the first two shows take place in London, UK - and as you'd expect, the Sonic Stadium will be doing something special to celebrate. More details to come early next week - but for now, why not consider going to a little UK Sonic Fan Meetup that will be happening next Saturday afternoon, if you happen to be in the area (or going to the show in the evening)?

I'll be there with a bunch of fellow old-school UK community legends, and hope to make new friends on the day! See you soon, maybe!

Classic 'ezBoard' SSMB Emojis

Finally, I wanted to add a cute little retro thing to the forums. You'll recall that, a million years ago, our very first iteration of the SSMB was on a platform called 'ezBoard'. It was glorious, it was new-frontier, it was... a bit crap, really. But we had some good times back in that little 2001-2004 era.

Some of that came from the various emojis that we used on the platform back then. What we used to called "emoticons" and "posticons", in the day. Well, I unearthed them all from the archives and decided to add them to this site.

You can find the above, and so many more, in the Emoji drawer when posting content on this site (click the smiley face emoji button). It's in the 'ezBoard' category, at the very bottom of the drawer.

Have fun with these, and I'll catch up with you all when we have more cool updates to share!