UBB.threads PHP Forum Software Community Forums Thread Like Summary - Ubb 7.7.3 winkey emoji shortcut issue

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?

I know how that goes.

utf8mb4_general_ci

utf8 - 8-bit unicode transformation format.
mb4 - store at 4 byte characters.
general (or unicode) - refers to the specific sorting and comparison rules.
ci - case insensitive.


utf8mb4_unicode_ci is based on the official Unicode rules for universal sorting and comparison, which sorts accurately in a wide range of languages.

utf8mb4_general_ci is a simplified set of sorting rules which aims to do as well as it can while taking many short-cuts designed to improve speed. It does not follow the Unicode rules and will result in undesirable sorting or comparison in some situations, such as when using particular languages or characters.


There is quite a bit more reading over here:
https://stackoverflow.com/questions...ral-ci-and-utf8-unicode-ci/766996#766996

There are even more recent updates within that link. But be aware that UBB.threads covers an extremely broad range of server setups with wide php and mysql versions. Some are a decade old -- are you still supporting php 5.4/UBBT7.5.4 sites? And some are running the bleeding edge php and mysql versions. The the choice needs to be made on which collations will best cover everyone.

The UBB.threads software has seen a tremendous amount of updates over the past 3 years. Prior to this, it remained near stagnant from 2009 - 2017.