There are probably more then 1,000 plugins avaliable for wordpress, and some of them have to be good. But how to determine which one you need for your blog? There are a lot of “best wordpress plugins” out there, so this list isn’t intended to be a list with the “best” plugins, but I show you here the plugins I use on all my blogs and are essential in my eyes. So, let’s get started:

• Akismet >> The most common spam fighter plugin. It comes already shipped with wordpress, you just have to get your API-key on wordpress.com and you’re done. This plugins works great for my sites, on some of them I get more them 200 comment spam a day, and just imagine how much time you save by turning this plugin on and not have to go to such a lot of comments to find a few good ones.
• Digg This Reloaded >> This simple plugin adds a “Digg this” button/link to the post. Easy configuration, no need to edit the theme files. This plugin has to be on my list, I’m a “digg” addicted!
• Feedburner Feed Replacement >> This plugin forwards all feed traffic to feedburner.com, where you can get a lot of statistic about your feed readers. A plugin for a statistic addicted like me.
• Google XML Sitempaps >> This plugin creates a sitempas.org compliant sitemap of your whole wordpress site. Sitemaps are supported by Google, MSN Live Search and Yahoo and one of the key factors to get traffic from search engines to your sites. This plugin is pretty straightforward to use, nearly no configuration needed, the sitemaps are generated on the fly.
• Google Analyticator >> A simple plugin which adds the needed javascript code for the google analytics statistic tracking service. Nice configuration page, you just have to copy and paste yout Analytics UID and your pages are ready to be analized.
• Installer >> This is not a very famous plugin, but I love it so much. This is a one click installer plugin for plugins and themes, sounds a bit confusing, but the usage is so straightforward that you can’t do wrong. And the best is, you can search right from your plugins page on wp-plugins.net for new plugins and install them with one click! And a great (but yet not much useful option) is the “Update plugin” option, which installs updates for your plugin if you’ve them installed using Installer. Obviously, always if the plugin author is using some syntax definition in there plugin description.
• Related Posts >> This plugin can show related posts for the post entry you’re reading. It’s using a keyword list to find related entries. It seems that the developer is not longer supporting this plugin.
• Sidebar Widgets >> If you’re using a widget enabled theme, then you definitely want this plugin. This plugin adds the “Sidebar Widgets” option under the Presentation menu where you can drag and drop your sidebar(s).
• Tags in the head >> A simple plugin to use UTW tags as meta keyword to get some more search engine friendly posts.
• the_excerpt Reloaded >> When a post does not contain an excerpt, this plugin displays the content of the post, which can be customized on the length and filtering type. You must call the function in your theme, so this plugin requires a bit of modification of your theme file.
• Tidy Up >> This plugin runs a HTML Tidy on all of your posts and comments. You need this plugin, if you want to create XHTML complaint web sites. A good administration web page, but not always that easy to use.
• Ultimate Tag Warrior >> A must have plugin. Tag your posts, create tag clouds, create links to flickr, technorati and a lot more. This plugin is so easy to use, and so much worth. You can’t run a blog without this plugin.
• WP-PostViews >> Enables you to display how many times a post had been viewed. A nice gimmick.
• WP Admin Bar 2 >> This plugin adds a small admin bar to the top of every page (you probably know it already if you have an account on wordpress.com).
• Youtube >> A sma ll plugin which adds a filter for displaying youtube videos in your posts.
• zooomr_RSS >> Well, this is the plugin I created for displaying photos from a zooomr rss feed. It is based on the flickrRSS plugin, similar option page, and if you’ve a widget enabled site you can set it up even without the need of modifying your theme files.

Well, this list is not intended to present the best wordpress plugins, but imho some of the most useful ones. If you’ve any suggestions, if you like some (other) plugins, just leave a reply here and write why you like them. I hope to hear from you

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