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

brokenlibrarian

SimpleSmileyReplace is a plugin that checks for the existence of a images/smilies/ folder in a theme. If that folder exists, WordPress uses the smiley files in that folder instead. The plugin assumes that the smilies have the usual filenames (icon_rolleyes.gif, etc).
It has no extra requirements and has been tested with modified versions of the twentyten through twentyfourteen themes.
Development on this plugin has halted. Other developers should feel free to use the Apache-licensed code for their own projects.
http://brokenlibrarian.org/tinyplugins/ 
brokenlibrarian@gmail.com 
09/28/14
<h3>License</h3>
Copyright 2014 Christian Wagner
Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the “License”); 
 you may not use this file except in compliance with the License. 
 You may obtain a copy of the License at
<pre><code> http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
</code></pre>
Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software 
 distributed under the License is distributed on an “AS IS” BASIS, 
 WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. 
 See the License for the specific language governing permissions and 
 limitations under the License.

SimpleSmileyReplace

SimpleSmileyReplace is a plugin that checks for the existence of a images/smilies/ folder in a theme. If that folder exists, WordPress uses the smiley …

Keep Emoticons as Text vs SimpleSmileyReplace