I am currently developing a new forum site that has a conservative older target audience. I am not sure at this stage whether those users would appreciate the use of emoticons. However, I would like to test using emoticons once the site is live.

If I install a emoticon plugin (Mona Lisa for example) and then sometime in the future I decide to delete it, is there any easy way to remove the ;-), :yes:,:cry: labels that remain in the text of my user’s replies.

If these emoticon labels can only be edited manually from each reply, then removing an emoticon plugin in the future would create a huge editing problem.

The same issue would arise if, some time in the future, support is no longer provided for that plugin.

So given the potential editing risk of installing an emoticon plugin and then removing it in the future I would like to hear others comments and feedback regarding using emoticons on a forum pitched to an older, conservative target audience?

I suspect the (future editing) risks of installing an emoticon plugin on my site outweigh the benefits. I would be very happy to receive you views on this issue.

Thanks in advance for any input or feedback you can offer.

Kind Regards

Max

[@robkk Moderator 8 years, 6 months ago]

As I state in this post, you may not need to even add an emoticons plugin, older conservatives may not even use it, but they might every now and then use the simple smilies like :) :( >:( :P

https://bbpress.org/forums/topic/smiley-emoticons/#post-175672