Dear both!

[…] I admit that I have a forum which is quite old, but would appreciate it if you don't just say, "please upgrade and try again..."

No problem; mine is v1.8… Maybe it’s better to post again at the ‘old’ forum.

I am actually quite inactive on my homepage in general, but the forum remains as a possiblity for people not to feel cut off. Recently, I saw that the smiles no longer appear.

Can you check whether the GIFs are still available at your server (sub-folder /img/smilies/)?

As it is, the :smileynames: do irritate a bit when they don't work.

If I look at the HTML-source code in your forum it seems that you have deactivated the smilies (otherwise the link to the file(s) should still exist and display the content of the alt-tag instead).

Log in as admin > Admin-Bereich > Forums-Einstellungen >
Smilies
Sollen Smilies durch Bilder ersetzt werden? > ● Ja ○ Nein