Geek Goddess

As of the release of 4.3, WordPress removed the “Formatting” section from the Writing settings. Included in there was the option to turn off WordPress’s default action to convert text emoticons to image smilies. This plugin does the same thing as unchecking the “convert to smilies” box that used to be available via the settings.

Keep Emoticons as Text

Disables the default WordPress option of converting emoticons to image smilies

quanganhdo

Custom Smilies (previously named Custom Smileys) gives you a chance to personalize your posts and comments using smilies of your choice instead of default ones.
Custom Smilies was selected as one of <a href="http://mashable.com/2007/07/24/wordpress-comments/" title="30+ plugins for WordPress comments" rel="nofollow ugc">30+ plugins for WordPress comments</a> and <a href="http://mashable.com/2007/08/16/wordpress-god300-tools-for-running-your-wordpress-blog/" title="300+ tools for running your WordPress blog" rel="nofollow ugc">300+ tools for running your WordPress blog</a>. These lists were conducted by Mashable, as of July 24th, 2007 and August 16th, 2007.
This plugin was first released in 2005 and it is now updated to be compatible with WordPress 2.3.2.
<h3>Troubleshooting</h3>
In case Custom Smilies doesn’t work well with your blog, make sure the <code>wp-plugins/custom-smilies/init.php</code> file is writable. CHMOD it to 777 or something like that.

Custom Smilies

Custom Smilies (previously named Custom Smileys) gives you a chance to personalize your posts and comments using smilies of your choice instead of def …

Keep Emoticons as Text vs Custom Smilies