It seems design of forum is changed tremendously.
Are there anything we should consider for further usage?

Hello.
Hope you are doing well!

You are right, many things changed.

We are just switched to another Forum engine which we have full control on.
All data is moved from previous forum to this one including users, public forums, topics and messages (including history), reactions, reports and private messages.

We made this step to introduce these:

1. Both English and Russian parts of the Forum now uses SMath user profile, so once you logged in on smath.com you can use the Forum as well.
   
   
2. Our local AI is now working as a spam filter, so we expect to fix most of spam related issues as soon as AI will be finally set up (it is working in experimental mode currently).
   
3. Private messages are now grouped by subject, so it is much easier to follow up the thread.
   
   
4. Simplification of using file attachments.
   
5. Moderation page made much more convenient and will be improved further.
   
   
6. As forum is now a part of our infrastructure we are able to provide more integration (will be available soon): News on the Home Page, comments to the Worksheets in Cloud, chat with Support team etc.
   
7. Fixed issues with unavailable images on Extensions Summary page.
   
   
8. Reorganize Samples forum into the Worksheets library (further integration with Cloud).
   
9. Restore Russian part of the Forum.

There are many other pros we will have in the future, so this switch was really required.

We still are working to set everything up so some minor issues are possible.

Please let me know if you'll find anything.

Best regards, Andrey Ivashov

Wrote

• Moderation page made much more convenient and will be improved further.

Long awaited change, the old panel was a mess. Thank you Andrey!

Wrote

• Fixed issues with unavailable images on Extensions Summary page.

I still can't delete existing ones or change them positions (^ and X buttons). Also seems that the human readable shortcut can't be set anymore.

Wrote

Are there anything we should consider for further usage?

On top of my mind, sometimes it was mentioned that the active discussions list seems too short when there are multiple discussions active.

I used to have a different username between forum and smath.com, I guess this originated due to the fact that I joined the forum on 2014 or similar, but users to handle SMath licenses are in place since 2020 or something.
I guess that I should have used the same user ID of the forum when I created the smath.com user in 2020? Not sure.
Anyway, my previous forum username was named "fedeghi".
The migration to the new forum engine allows me to login in with my (private) SMath account and email address (please note that I also have another company account, since I was able to promote enough the magic of SMath in my company, to the point that 5 business licenses were purchased in 2024.).

If it was possible to merge my old "fedeghi" forum user (posted replies, private messages, etc) with this (apparently new) forum user (related to my private SMath account) from which I'm writing now, it would be good and appreciated.
But if this takes more than a couple of minutes to figure out how to merge users or migrate from "fedeghi" to this user here, than no problem at all: leave it as it is and I'm going to start from scratch using the forum with this fresh user ID. It will be completely fine!

Thanks
fedeghi/federico

Hello, Federico.

Please confirm the user who wrote this message yours: https://smath.com/ru-RU/forum/topic/mCcmVb#msg125741

Generally, we merged users by e-mails, so in those cases when different emails used we had to preserve both user profiles.
I think we need to introduce some common logic to merge different profiles. I'll discuss this with a team.

Best regards, Andrey Ivashov.

Wrote

Hello, Federico.
Please confirm the user who wrote this message yours: https://smath.com/ru-RU/forum/topic/mCcmVb#msg125741

Hi Andrey, I confirm that I wrote that reply.

Wrote

Generally, we merged users by e-mails, so in those cases when different emails used we had to preserve both user profiles.

It makes sense indeed to use the registered email to sort out user profiles. As I said, if there is a fast and easy way to transfer what was "fedeghi" account to my new "federico" account, fine... otherwise leave it as it is, it will be fine anyway


Ps: apparently this new forum interface doesn't allow to see a "preview" of the reply, before posting it? I liked that feature, especially when multi-quoting answers by other users

bbcode noparse not working.
I was using it to prevent text converting into emojis.

Wrote

bbcode noparse not working.
I was using it to prevent text converting into emojis.

Thank you! I will check it.

Another thing that doesn't works properly is the read status for guests. If you are not logged in, everything is always marked as "new post".

Davide, agree. This is an easy one.

Wrote

if there is a fast and easy way to transfer what was "fedeghi" account to my new "federico" account, fine... otherwise leave it as it is, it will be fine anyway

We have discussed this with a team and it seems currently it is not something we can do without additional development. The general plan is to allow users to have multiple profiles which can be used separately or together at the same time (in that case it will look like profiles are merged). This is not in our schedule yet, but let's see... plans changing sometimes.

Wrote

new forum interface doesn't allow to see a "preview" of the reply, before posting it? I liked that feature, especially when multi-quoting answers by other users

Hope to restore this functionality soon.

Functionality to follow the Topic restored:


You can always check topics you follow here:


You will be notified by email when new message is added to such Topic or existing message is changed.

Previously, clicking an image was previewed with a popup window scaled to window size.
Now clicking is trying to download that image, which is challenging sometimes.
Is it possible to bring this feature back? I am using firefox-esr btw.

If you enter the forum from the homepage (footer "forum" link) and you are not logged in, you are redirected to a local forum (in my case it-IT), landing non us/ru users on an empty forum.

Thank you for the information.

Indeed, we forgot to handle redirect from locals other than EN/RU.
Actually, we have an interesting idea how to merge messages on all languages to the single Forum UI. Let's see what we can do faster...

Best regards.

I'm glad to inform about latest changes to Forum interface:

1. Preview button is added to the Post message page:
   
   
2. Translate button is added to the messages if its language differs from the current Forum language: Example url.
   
   
   Here is the result if it-IT will be in the url instead of en-US:
   
   

Hi. In the previous version of the forum, the default link above the post name was a "find unread" function or something similar that pointed to the last post the user hadn't read in the topic. While a link to the last available topic is available, this option is especially useful when there is more than one page in a single topic.

Best regards.
Alvaro.

Greetings,

• Active Discussions: the last time a post is made is noted correctly, but the "person" noted is not the last person who posted last, but rather the person who posted first.
  
• ERR: It feels like I there is an issue with the bulleted list. It feels like the first {/list} that is declared ends up terminating ALL of the itemized lists; i.e., it doesn't seem to pair {list} to {/list}; it just short-circuits ALL lists/sub-lists currently pending at the first {/list}.
  
• I see no ability to view posts made by a specific person; (i.e., if I want to see Alvaro's last 5 posts: I don't know how to do this)
  
• Private Messages: they 'work', but you need to type in the user handle as "Profile Names" will not work, and will not 'autopopulate' I'm able to track down the user handle by reviewing the url of their profile, but that is not very obvious and could be made easier.
  
• Google Search is Garbage: I don't know why, but I never had any luck using 'google search' as a webpart; I don't know what engine was used on the old forum, but it worked well enough. Truth be told, I would rather have a Local search to sort by Forum Topic/wiki/extensions/etc. and sort by date, or author; especially to the point if its my own 'past posts;' I see no easy way to easily review previous threads unless you manually crawl through your whole history.
  
• Can you rename the 'Post Reply' button at the bottom? Several times, I use the quick reply, only to hit the "post Reply" button and it launches a new window.... It can be renamed to "Open Reply Form", OR you can have the Reply auto-populate with the current text of the quick-reply; copy and paste the current draft into the "Full" reply form interface.
  

I know this is a work in progress, I appreciate the work and improvements made to date.


May this be of Good Help;
⚜ Kenny Lemens, P.E. ᵂᴵ

Wrote

Active Discussions: the last time a post is made is noted correctly, but the "person" noted is not the last person who posted last, but rather the person who posted first.

This is a known finding. Actually, initially we decided to put topic starter there and that is how it is available today. Yes, we will change starter to the last person who wrote a message.

Wrote

ERR: It feels like I there is an issue with the bulleted list. It feels like the first {/list} that is declared ends up terminating ALL of the itemized lists; i.e., it doesn't seem to pair {list} to {/list}; it just short-circuits ALL lists/sub-lists currently pending at the first {/list}.

I will check it, thank you.

Wrote

I see no ability to view posts made by a specific person; (i.e., if I want to see Alvaro's last 5 posts: I don't know how to do this)

This feature is available, but links are available for admins only. However you can use url like https://smath.com/en-US/forum/user-lemensk/my/All-User-Messages for now - in future we will legitimate such urls.

Wrote

Private Messages: they 'work', but you need to type in the user handle as "Profile Names" will not work, and will not 'autopopulate' I'm able to track down the user handle by reviewing the url of their profile, but that is not very obvious and could be made easier.

Some limitations made for purpose: our user profiles are not always part of the Forum users (as in the simple Forum engine). Some of the users may not want to be found by Forums search and that is why we allow using login only. But there is a better choice, I think: there is a separate button to create PM on every user post:

Wrote

Google Search is Garbage: I don't know why, but I never had any luck using 'google search' as a webpart; I don't know what engine was used on the old forum, but it worked well enough. Truth be told, I would rather have a Local search to sort by Forum Topic/wiki/extensions/etc. and sort by date, or author; especially to the point if its my own 'past posts;' I see no easy way to easily review previous threads unless you manually crawl through your whole history.

Ok, got it. Previous Forum engine had a built-in search inside. We want to make it better (use elastic search and/or AI for these purposes). This just requires some additional time.

Wrote

Can you rename the 'Post Reply' button at the bottom? Several times, I use the quick reply, only to hit the "post Reply" button and it launches a new window.... It can be renamed to "Open Reply Form", OR you can have the Reply auto-populate with the current text of the quick-reply; copy and paste the current draft into the "Full" reply form interface.

Good point! Thank you! We will fix this.

Best regards.