A lot of users are posting emoji with the shortcut:
Winkey [+] .
For some reason it is hit or miss.
I tried this site and they work fine.
Usually they get a ???? instead.

So trying to find what is different here
Version here is 7.7.4
One item I noticed is they have a lot of added graemlins.
I changed the setting to not show all and it did nothing in the interface when selecting them
Also most of them do not have shortcuts added but do have ubbcode.
Some also appear to be very large and animated.
Also I am still on php 5.6.39 due to some lingering 3rd party scripts outside of UBB I have not updated yet.(working on that)
Finally we are on https and I updated the database to utf8 from iso.
The site is
https://sundance-communications.com/forum
And prior to me it has been upgraded several times starting with classic.
I did the last upgrade to v7.7.3 and I did not alter anything outside of the control panel.

So what do you thunk could be the issue?

Blue Man Group
There is no such thing as stupid questions. Just stupid answers