Yes the website and forum are two different "websites", I have little control over the forum since I am using a pre-built forum instead of custom coding one. The rest of the site was hand codded by me and can be changed with a lot more ease... except for the control which brings in the advanced text editing areas. That is also from a third party and does offer lots of customization but there is a limit to what I can do with it.
I would have to hand create the smileys, create the graphic and the symbol to make them appear... so it is possible but I don't have the time to do it.