Is this something related for not loading the images? What should I do?
I have also nodebb-plugin-emoji-skype installed.
127.0.0.1 is localhost. If you do this on a live site, the URL of the images will be looking on the visiting users computer, not your server. If you're testing locally, then it's fine. But if it's on any kind of external server, localhost/127.0.0.1 won't work. Try disabling emoji Skype as well, then restart nodebb. I use emoji extended (it has the most options) and it works fine on 0.5.0-2/3.
I also restarted my server with the admin gui - is a hard restart or reinstallation necessary for the changes to take effect?
XD don't worry, I concede. I'm not sure the plugin ever made it onto npm either, the plugin system was that new that you had to install it via git only.