I got a help request from a VRRA member that was having issues posting on the forum,
The problem was that an emoji of a “face with a stuck out tongue and winking eye” was pasted in as part of the message.
This emoji is part of an extended emoticon set. Simple emoji’s are contained in 3 bits of data. Extended emoji’s require 4 bits
All databases use 3 bits by default. When the message with the 4 bit emoji is submitted to the database that stores the forum data it sees the extra bit and just throws its hand up and says what the hell is that.
How to get around this…
1) The simplest way is just don’t paste extended emoticons into messages. This is free.
2) I can change the character set the database supports from utf8 to utf8mb4. There would be a cost associated with this as its not supported in free database versions, but it can be done when we move the forum to Amazon.
If it’s not really aggravating anyone, I just suggest leaving it and only use the shorter emoji set.
Happy to do either.
