reggae
The smilies are just animated GIF files I have stored on the forum subdirectory and define in the forum software.
No special javascript necessary. If you want one, right click the image and file save as to keep it on your own computer. To my knowledge, all have come from royalty-free websites that offer silly smilies. I have HUNDREDS of them and started to sort by category...will take a while!)
Linking to external images: Linking to your own images = OK. If the site allows external links = OK (like Photobucket does), etc. Tony sometimes points to images he has stored on his site, or storage area at photobucket. That's perfectly fine. Use the INSERT IMAGE button (under the ITALICS button) and define the http address where the image is. No one is allowed to link to images that are hosted on other sites that are intended for download only or are copyrighted, or not their own. If you are allowd to download the image, do it, then put it in a storage area of your own, link to it. I don't want samisite taking someone else's bandwidth illegally just to pull in images. If someone linked to samisite images and was pulling them into their forums I would be angry about it. Stealing bandwidth is a big problem.