My Top Ten WordPress plugins

I’m convinced that WordPress is the best blogging platform on the planet. While some people think its hard to use, I’ve found it very easy to setup and utilize as a platform straight out of the box or zip file would be more accurate, but the main power of the WordPress platform is the ability to easily modify its functionality with plugins and themes. You can add features and change the entire look of your blog in just a few minutes by just uploading a few files and activating them.

Here are a few plugins I think no one running a WordPress install should be without in no particular order of importance:

1. Askimet – This comes default in the install, you just need to activate it and obtain a key, but it catches the majority of spam on my blogs and does a pretty decent job. I did not turn it on at first when I started blogging with WordPress and I wasted a lot of time deleting spam comments. I could have used that time writing content.

2. Another WordPress Meta Plugin – This plugin allows you to add keywords and description Meta tags for each individual post. While WordPress is designed with SEO in mind, this plugin will help you obtain better search engine rankings and more traffic.

3. FeedBurner Feed Replacement – This plugin allows you to send your feed to Feedburner to manage. This is critical for any serious blogger. You want to be able to track your feed subscribers and FeedBurner is one of the best ways to utilize that task. Plus with the latest news that Google has purchased FeedBurner then it makes sense to be a part of this.

4. Sidebar Widgets – This plugin allows you to add content such as Google Adsense or other ad blocks to your blog easily. This is a must have for monetization and just for ease of management.

5. Social Bookmarks – Social Bookmarking sites such as Digg, Stumble Upon, reddit, and a host of others will bring you a lot of traffic and subscribers if utilized properly. You need this plugin to allow your visitors to help you with this traffic, plus its nice to allow people to easily save your posts for later viewing.

6. WSR Contact Form – A successful blog creates a community and one way that community is created is by feedback to the blog author from visitors. You don’t want to put your email address out on the blog ( the spammers will get you) so this plugin allows you to receive feedback from your readers when a comment is not the correct medium.

7. Google Sitemaps – This plugin allows you to create a sitemap to submit to Google or the other SE’s. This is imperative for SEO purposes and for ensuring the SE’s have all your posts indexed. The cool thing about this plugin is it requires no maintenance. You set it up and then each time you post it updates your sitemap and pings Google to inform them of your changes.

8. Simple tags – This plugin allows you to create Tags on your post very easily. This helps bring in traffic from social sites that utilize tags( almost all of them). I’m not sure I will continue to utilize this plugin because of the recent changes at Technorati, but for now it makes the list.

9. Adsense Delexe — If you are running Adsense on your blog then this is a must have. This plugin allows you to easily insert Adsense ads into your posts where users are more likely to click on the ads.

10. Adhesive – This plugin allows you to write a sticky post that stays at the top of your blog. This plugin makes it very easy when you need to provide some information to your visitors and you want to keep that information above the fold in plain sight.

There are many other plugins that are useful when running a WordPress blog and the ones that are most useful t o each blogger depending upon the focus of your site. Its worth it to spend some time browsing all the Plugins on wp-plugins.net to find ones that are useful to you. This is the top ten plugin list, but I’m going to make it eleven, because of a plugin I just found last night named What Would Seth Godwin Do. This is an interesting little plugin and I’m not sure how useful it will prove, but I think it will be.

Basically this plugin allows you to show a message to new visitors to your blog and give them the opportunity to easily subscribe to your feed. Used in conjunction with the FeedBurner Plugin and this could be a powerful function. The message is shown to new users either before or after your posts, but it is non-intrusive and only shows up a certain number of times ( which is configurable) so it does not get in the way of your visitor’s experience.

Most of these plugins can be found on wp-plugins.net and the ones that can’t will show up in the first results of Google. Check them out.

[tags]WordPress, blogging, seo, social media, social boookmarking[/tags]