must have WP plugins?

[katef]

I am slowly ploughing through migrating and setting up my new blog and was just wondering if anyone could suggest some plugins that are must haves?? or ones that are just really nifty?

thanks

Kate

[Leigh]

I am sure I have way too many plugins installed :hehe:

A few good ones I would suggest.

One Click (http://anirudhsanjeev.org/oneclick-plugin/)- This one allows you to install themes and plugins with..one click, super easy without having to ftp.

Dragon Design mailer (http://www.dagondesign.com/articles/secure-form-mailer-plugin-for-wordpress/)- This is a contact form, it allows you to customise the form to have what ever field you require, and you can have more than one form. Also has a bit of spam protection

Dofollow (http://kimmo.suominen.com/sw/dofollow/)

All in one SEO (http://wp.uberdose.com/2007/03/24/all-in-one-seo-pack/)

Force www or non www (http://txfx.net/code/wordpress/enforce-www-preference/) To force all traffic to either www.yoursite.com or yoursite.com. It's important to use one or the other..not both.

Ok..will stop there for now...love to know what everyone else uses?

[DeborahR]

I use the following plugins on my site because I consider these must haves for a Word Press blog:

Akismet (http://akismet.com/) - checks comments to see if they look like spam or not

cformsII (http://www.deliciousdays.com/cforms-plugin) - create forms so others can contact you without you having to reveal your email address

All in One SEO Pack (http://wp.uberdose.com/2007/03/24/all-in-one-seo-pack/) - Leigh recommended this one too. This plugin creates search engine friendly tags for your blog posts - highly effective for driving search engine traffic to your site.

Google XML Sitemaps (http://www.arnebrachhold.de/redir/sitemap-home/) - creates a search engine sitemap for your blog and notifies Google, Yahoo, Ask and others whenever your blog is updated. NB. You will have to notify Google and Yahoo manually the first time but there are instructions with the plugin on how to do this.

Share This (http://sharethis.com/) - enables visitors to add your blog posts to social networking sites such as, Digg, Reddit, Newsvine, etc. These sites are very hot at the moment so you must have this plugin.

I've only been using these plugins for a couple of weeks and already I've seen an increase in traffic to my blog and I have a lot more links on the search engines now. All these plugins are also available from the Word Press (http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/) website.

Happy blogging.

[katef]

oh thanks heaps.... I was going to ask about the contact form thing and the SEO thing and the social media thing! You guys are great!

Kate

[ModernGoddess]

I guess it depends on what your blog is going to be used for. I use the Askimet, NoFollow Free and All in One SOE.

I also use:-

Event Calendar - as this allows me to list upcoming events on my magazine site.

Subscribe to Comments - allows people to subscribe to particular posts and receive an email when a comment has been made on the post.

I am interested in trying out WP-Tables, PodPress, AdSense Manager and WP-Polls.

There are so many there that I wish I had more time to play.

Good luck with it all :D

[karooch]

PodPress can be a bit finicky with some themes. And it doesn't always play nicely with others.

I was using it on my blog when it threw a hissy fit and decided to display itself up at the top right on my sidebar. Whatever adjustments we made to it didn't matter it just kept popping up there. So I had to abandon it and just use a loudspeaker graphic for my podcasts.

GoogleAnalytics and Feedburner Feedsmith are the only other two i would add to the above suggestions.