Creating custom smiley themes for Pidgin is easy. The drawback is that you are the only one who will see them, unless you force your friends to use the same pack! But first you need to make that pack so let's do it..

1. Make smileys, collect smileys, put them all in one folder! Name the folder the way you will name your smile pack, like my_custom_smileys

2. Inside your newly created folder with smileys, create a blank text file, name it theme and remove the extension. So it will be a file without an extension. To remove an extension you need to be able to see it. If you don't and you are on windows, in your folder menu go to Tools > Folder Options. The box will appear, click View tab and un-check Hide extensions for known file types option then click Ok.

3. Open your newly created theme file in text editor (Right click > Open > Select Notepad from the list, or another text editor of your choice)

4. Add the following text to your file:


Icon will show on the list with other smiley themes when installed in Pidgin, next to the name, description and author information.

5. Now make a list of icons with the text they would appear instead of:


Take each one of your smileys name (with extension), write it down, and then put a code for the smiley next to it. Use tab to separate smiley code from smiley file name, and use a space between the smiley codes if there is more than one.

6. If you want to create separate smileys for MSN or AIM messengers, you can do that too! You only need to make a list of icons you want to use for say msn, and put a [MSN] before it, like:


The protocols are: AIM - [AIM]; ICQ - [ICQ]; Yahoo - [Yahoo] or [Yahoo!] (unsure); XMPP (including Google Talk) - [XMPP], the [default] pack will work on all of them the same way.

7. Now save changes in your theme file. It should look like:


8. Now you need to tar.gz your smiley pack folder, so that other people could download and install it. This task is easy if you are on Linux, however if you are using windows, you will have to get some additional program for that.

I recommend this little program: TAR.GZ File Compression for Windows. It is very easy to use, download the ezGZ program, unzip and click ezgz.exe, select the compression, then simply drag and drop your smiley theme folder on the program window and click Yes. Now enter the name of the archive and Save.

9. Test your smiley pack before sending it out to your friends! You can find instructions for theme installation here:
AbleNET Smiley Theme Pack for Pidgin (Gaim) with Instalation Instructions

If you did everything right, it will work! Now go share your smiley theme with the world!

Good luck!