On old forum posts, like this one, there are weird image errors.


If you view the source of the post, you can see that they were just typing :) and :P…


Now, if I type those here, they work:

(in fact, every emoji does)…

Why is this?

Viewing the source of the image (not the post), we can decipher that it's actually fetching the ALPHA URL counterparts, as it was merely moved, presumably the emoji updates were done later, but djangobb fetches differently for some reason.
The image links to them are:
Same for the second one:
…Which don't exist anymore.

Contraery wrote:

(#2)
Viewing the source of the image (not the post), we can decipher that it's actually fetching the ALPHA URL counterparts, as it was merely moved, presumably the emoji updates were done later, but djangobb fetches differently for some reason.

When posting a post, the forums store the post's HTML alongside its BBCode, and uses the HTML for rendering (this is also why things like the old quote style and the removed [size] tag still show up in old posts). I assume emojis just used to point to the alpha site at that point, and it got changed later, but the old posts stayed.