You can either make your own smilies or get them from sites like beccary.com or ilumine.net.

FTP your smilies to the Emoticons folder (CuteNews >> Data >> Emoticons).

Log in to CuteNews. Go to Options, then click on System Configurations.

Look for the area that says Smilies. Change the words from the default ones to the names of your smilies.

For example, I made this smiley. I uploaded it as omg.gif. In my System Configuration, I just put "omg."