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

tuxlog

wp-monalisa is the plugin that smiles at you like monalisa does. place the smilies of your choice in posts, pages or comments.
There are a lot plugins for smiley support out there and some of them are really useful. 
Most of them don’t work out of the box and this is what wp-monalisa tries to achieve, giving you the ability to maintain your smilies and even turn them into img tags.
it’s easy and it smiles at you…what else do you want?
Features:
<ul>
<li>maintain your smilies in a separate directory</li>
<li>activate or deactivate smilies for posts or comments</li>
<li>replace smilies with img tags</li>
<li>extend or replace wordpress smiley replacement</li>
<li>while edit posts or pages, pops-up in a draggable meta-box</li>
<li>extends your comment form to give you visitors the freedom to smile 🙂</li>
<li>support for fckeditor (tested with v3.3.1)</li>
<li>fully integrated with BuddyPress, bbPress and wpForo</li>
</ul>
The video shows a short overview of what wp-monalisa can do for you. <iframe loading="lazy" class="youtube-player" width="750" height="422" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/uHXlELn27ko?version=3&rel=1&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&fs=1&hl=en-US&autohide=2&wmode=transparent" allowfullscreen="true" style="border:0;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-popups allow-presentation allow-popups-to-escape-sandbox"></iframe>
Credits: 
Thanks go to all who support this plugin, with hints and suggestions for improvment and specially to
<ul>
<li>Michal Maciejewski, polish translation</li>
<li>Denny from http://www.vau3.de for testing and giving input for the BuddyPress integration</li>
<li>FJ Bakry, Camisto (https://camisto.com) for indonesian translation</li>
</ul>

wp-Monalisa

wp-monalisa is the plugin that smiles at you like monalisa does. place the smilies of your choice in posts, pages or comments.

Keep Emoticons as Text vs wp-Monalisa