Possibility to disable Emojis in certain fields like thread title and username ☠

[Hoffi]

The Thread Title says it all. It would be great, if it's possible to deny Emojis in certain fields, if possible.

 

[RobinHood]

I see users with emoji in their name now, might be tough to tag, especially on desktop.

Tagging autocomplete doesn't seem to work on this persons name too if I type @URQ

 

[420]

We just finally added emoji support and after one day we already have people using the emojis in titles and usernames.

If there is no way to stop members from adding emojis to titles and usernames, then we will have to disable it.

I wonder if @AndyB would be interested in creating an add on for this, since Xenforo shows no interest?

 

[420]

Unfortunately, Andy declined the opportunity.

Oh well, it was exciting to imagine our members finally being able to use their smartphone emojis, after being a common feature for over a decade already on most other social networking platforms.

 

[Lee]

What is wrong with people using them in usernames and thread titles? I dont see much issue myself.

 

[420]

It's causing issues with tagging people by username and titles are not being spidered/indexed properly by Google because there are images in the titles, when there should be strictly text. Plus it makes a mature forum full of adults, look like a bunch of kids have taken over the place. Turns a classy looking environment into a cheesy one overnight.

 

[Mouth]

Plus it makes a mature forum full of adults, look like a bunch of kids have taken over the place. Turns a classy looking environment into a cheesy one overnight.

IMHO, that can generally be said of emoji placed anywhere

 

[Lee]

It's causing issues with tagging people by username and titles are not being spidered/indexed properly by Google because there are images in the titles, when there should be strictly text. Plus it makes a mature forum full of adults, look like a bunch of kids have taken over the place. Turns a classy looking environment into a cheesy one overnight.

Fair enough, if you look it like that you are right. Good suggestion.

 

[Jeremy P]

You can set the 'Username match regular expression' option (under 'Username validation') to only permit usernames with alphanumerics and white-space using something like /^[a-z0-9\s]+$/i.

It's causing issues with tagging people by username and titles are not being spidered/indexed properly by Google because there are images in the titles, when there should be strictly text.

Emojis are just text (though I can see how that may be confusing, particularly if you are normalizing them to a standard style in content bodies, in which case they are rendered as images). In areas such as page titles, they are rendered natively using your system fonts, and search engines should have no trouble spidering or indexing them.

 

[Claudio]

There is already an option that will strip emoji and ensure your URLs only contain basic characters, it's the romanize option.

 

[420]

You can set the 'Username match regular expression' option (under 'Username validation') to only permit usernames with alphanumerics and white-space using something like /^[a-z0-9\s]+$/i.


Emojis are just text (though I can see how that may be confusing, particularly if you are normalizing them to a standard style in content bodies, in which case they are rendered as images). In areas such as page titles, they are rendered natively using your system fonts, and search engines should have no trouble spidering or indexing them.

That is a really good assumption, are you able to confirm that without a doubt with Google's always changing algorithms?

 

[420]

There is already an option that will strip emoji and ensure your URLs only contain basic characters, it's the romanize option.

How about thread titles?

 

[Jeremy P]

That is a really good assumption, are you able to confirm that without a doubt with Google's always changing algorithms?

Yep.

 

[420]

Yep.

Fantastic. Can you please link to the source data of this confirmation from Google? Thank you.

 

[Ozzy47]

titles are not being spidered/indexed properly by Google because there are images in the titles

Can you link to the source from Google that provides this information?

 

[420]

Can you link to the source from Google that provides this information?

No, I cannot because trying to understand Google's constantly changing algorithms is like learning rocket science.

This is why I come here to the software manufacturer's website to get confirmation.

Their tech said they can confirm, so I'd like to see the source data.

 

[Ozzy47]

After doing a few emoji searches in Google, it's become pretty clear that emojis help boost visibility and do not harm SEO. If anything it helps, https://www.oberlo.com/blog/emoji-seo

Me personally, I don’t care for them in certain situations.

 

[Chris D]

Fantastic. Can you please link to the source data of this confirmation from Google? Thank you.

Their tech said they can confirm, so I'd like to see the source data.

I'm sure you well know that Google are often not particularly transparent when it comes to the mystery that is their algorithms. So I'm sure you know there is not going to be any sort of official confirmation from Google on this.

However, it's clearly evident from the example @Jeremy P provided and our own experience that emojis inside URL fragments or titles, or message content has no impact whatsoever on Google's ability to be able to index and retrieve results containing emoji.

Jeremy is absolutely right - emojis are basically characters. They are not images they are strings that devices display as icons. Each device has their own set of graphics to denote each emoji hence why emojis often look different across different devices.

Many sites are running XF 2.0 and above and many sites have therefore had emojis on their site (and it is enabled by default on new installs) for many years. Aside from the occasional comment about personal preference, i.e. not wanting them displayed in usernames (which Jeremy provided a workaround for), there have been no reports in all of that time (over 3 years) that any negative impacts have been seen as a result of allowing emoji.

I'm sure you'll appreciate that if this was any sort of issue there would be a concerted effort to prevent them being used in many other sites including some of the biggest websites on the internet.

Twitter
Facebook
Instagram
GitHub

 

[Wildcat Media]

You can set the 'Username match regular expression' option (under 'Username validation') to only permit usernames with alphanumerics and white-space using something like /^[a-z0-9\s]+$/i.

I may go about it like this, to allow a handful of additional characters:

/^[\x22-\x7e\xbf-\xff]+$

Plus it makes a mature forum full of adults, look like a bunch of kids have taken over the place. Turns a classy looking environment into a cheesy one overnight.

This is exactly why we want to get rid of it. I have not yet converted two forums from 1.5 to 2.2 and honestly, this is the reason why. We want it in in message bodies only--members are asking for that. But we have that small subset of members who will abuse it once they realize they can "emoji all the things." I would attempt to create an add-on to filter it out but have no clue as to how I would do it.

 

[AndyB]

I wonder if @AndyB would be interested in creating an add on for this, since Xenforo shows no interest?

You might like this add-on:

https://xenforo.com/community/resources/thread-title-manager.8176/