Is there an easy way to update the software of the forum just enough that it’ll support emojis? The site’s native smileys have a certain retro charm to them, but I’m more used to emojis — which have become universal at this point. You can use them almost everywhere now.

It doesn't look very easy to set it up to support emojis. It's a bit beyond my technical expertise. I don't know if I would want to alter the database and risk breaking the forum. We're running older versions of MySQL and PHP, so there could be some issues.

Some emojis seem to work in thread titles or posts if you copy and paste them. I don't want to replace any of our existing smilies with emojis. I could maybe add a few select emojis or smilies upon request.

testing goat emoji

Tom Brady is the 🐐

From ChatGPT (https://chatgpt.com/share/6a4ac7eb-1394-83ea-9aa9-be611dafd2f6):

If you're running vBulletin 3.8.11, the short answer is that native emoji support is not built into vB 3.x, and simply enabling a setting won't make it work.

Whether you can use emojis depends mainly on your database and character encoding.

1. Check your database character set (most important)

The original vBulletin 3.8 installations typically use MySQL's utf8 character set (now called utf8mb3), which cannot store emoji characters because they require 4-byte Unicode.

To support emojis, your database, tables, and text columns need to be converted to utf8mb4. This is the same requirement vBulletin support recommends for newer versions.

For example:

ALTER DATABASE your_database
CHARACTER SET utf8mb4
COLLATE utf8mb4_unicode_ci;

Then each table and relevant text column must also be converted.

2. Make sure your pages use UTF-8

Your forum pages should send:

<meta charset="UTF-8">

or the equivalent HTTP header.

If the pages are using ISO-8859-1 or another legacy encoding, emoji will not display correctly.

3. Ensure the MySQL connection uses utf8mb4

Your PHP/MySQL connection must also use utf8mb4, otherwise emojis may become question marks or corrupted text before they're even stored.

4. The editor

vBulletin 3.8's editor won't have an emoji picker like modern forums.

However, if the database and encoding support utf8mb4, users can usually:

Copy and paste emojis 😀
Use their phone or operating system's emoji keyboard
Insert emojis directly into posts

5. Be aware of compatibility

vBulletin 3.8.11 was released long before emojis became common. Even after converting to utf8mb4, you may encounter issues with:

Older plugins
Search indexing
Some MODs
Older MySQL versions
Older PHP versions

A full backup before converting is essential.

If your goal is just to have smiley icons

If you mean classic forum smileys like :), :(, :D, etc., those are managed in AdminCP → Smilies and don't require emoji support.

If you mean actual Unicode emojis like:

😀 😂 ❤️ 👍 🎉

then you'll need the utf8mb4 conversion described above.

If you tell me:

your MySQL version,
your PHP version,
and whether your forum currently uses latin1 or utf8,

I can outline the safest way to upgrade a vBulletin 3.8.11 installation for emoji support without breaking the forum.

Let’s try some. Should be a hockey net, hockey stick and puck, and a cookie.

�� �� ��

Let’s try some. Should be a hockey net, hockey stick and puck, and a cookie.

�� �� ��

How are you copying and pasting them? You need to copy the characters.

https://graphemica.com/%F0%9F%A5%85

🥅 🏒 🍪

How are you copying and pasting them? You need to copy the characters.

https://graphemica.com/%F0%9F%A5%85

🥅 🏒 🍪

He’s probably typing them from his iPad keyboard: 🥅 🏒 🍪


Had no idea you could work around it by pasting them from a different source: 🥅 🏒 🍪

He’s probably typing them from his iPad keyboard: �� �� ��


Yup. If I have to do any work past that I’m not interested.

��

Wow - drag and drop. Did this work?

No.

If you don't see the actual emoji(s) in the reply box after copying and pasting, then it's not going to work. It also removes them if you later edit your post. It seems to only work on the first try.