1. Not for this leaderboard. See https://www.speedrun.com/smw/thread/8w7yc for rules pertaining to which emulators are valid for this leaderboard.
2. That's fine.
3. Most people make their own splits in e.g. LiveSplit. If you need somewhere to look for thoughts on where to place your splits, https://splits.io/games/smw is a good place to start.

Welcome, and have fun!

use the latest snes9x version , its allowed and has an autosplitter function in livesplit with this emulator