8 WordPress Emoticons Plugins

1. Smilies Themer allows you to use smilies (emoticons) themes (or packs) to replace the wordpress default ones. It has a 5 star rating and was downloaded 13,547 times. I like this one since it also includes toolbar.

2. Tango/GNOME Smilies replaces the blocky default (GIF) smilies with beautiful Tango/GNOME (PNG) smilies. It has a 3 star rating and was downloaded 2,242 times.

3. Yahoo Messenger Emoticons is designed to replace the wordpress default smilies with the emoticons used on Yahoo Messenger. It has a 4 star rating and was downloaded 1,717 times.

4. C4F Textarea Toolbar adds a toolbar for markup and emoticons insertion to WordPress comments’ textarea. It is extremely easy to set up and customize. It doesn’t have a rating and was downloaded 952 times.

5. WP Smiley Switcher can change your smileys to another smiley pack or you can use your own smileys. It has a 2 star rating and was downloaded 914 times.

6. Speedy Smilies speeds up and beautifies your blog by substituting the individually-wrapped WordPress smilies with a single CSS image sprite containing all emoticons.It has a 4 star rating and was downloaded 757 times.

7. WP-Smiley define smilies as your way. It has a 5 star rating and was downloaded 678 times.

8. Kaskus Emoticons is an emoticon set inspired by Kaskus. it has a 5 star rating and was downloaded 541 times. Although it’s last on the list it’s certainly worth looking at with it’s 5 star rating.

Keep in mind that the number of downloads doesn’t necessarily mean that the plugin is the best. Since a newer plugin may obviously be downloaded fewer times. I made this list on December 2, 2009.

Try out the plugins and let me know your favorite in the comment section below.