An avatar here is the piccy under your name on the left - best thing is to grab what you want and save it to your own computer first. Make sure it's no larger than 80x80 pixels in size or it won't work. Then go into your profile here and delete the old picture, if you have one, and select the new one from your own computer (use the 'browse' button). I found that I had to delete my old one, submit that, then go back into profiles for it to accept a new one.
If you're talking about the smilies, above and beyond the ones on the left of creating a new message (Emoticons), you can get these all over. I use
http://www.mysmilies.com/ a lot where they have a good selection
While you're on that site you click on an icon and it will copt the code reauired into a little box on the screen - copy this (I use CTRL + C as a shortcut), come back to BBFans and your new message and paste it in as it is - it will show something like IMG followed by the code and ending in /IMG - those are in square [] brackets.
Easy when you know hoe - it helps to have two broswer windows open - in Internet Explorer click File at the top left and then New then Window OR CTRL + N as a shortcut.
... Your posting look so good with all the different ones 
thanks
but I will keep trying 
cheers