smileys don't work

I'm starting to think that smiley's don't really work. The documentation says to install a link in smileys.php (smiley.php?f=1). Where do you do that, and what does smiley.php?f=1 really mean. The answers to people's questions have not helped make it work. The hacks make no sense. Why is it so hard?

Any real help is appreciated.

i had the same probs and just found easysmilies as plug in - works very fine from the first moment on:)