Must Have WordPress Plugins

The following blog plugins are personal favourites of mine and work with WordPress versions 2.x.x.  If you wish to add to this list, please do so in the comments by providing the title, description and link.

AbsoluteRSS
Adjusts your links in RSS to use absolute links so that they work correctly in all feed readers (and validate).

Add Meta Tags
Adds the Description and Keywords XHTML META tags to your blog’s front page and to each one of the posts, static pages and category archives. This operation is automatic, but the generated META tags can be fully customized. Also, the inclusion of other META tags, which do not need any computation, is possible.

AddThis Social Bookmarking Widget
Help your visitor promote your website or blog. Put the AddThis Social Bookmarking Widget on your site or blog, so any visitor can easily bookmark it. The widget works with all popular bookmarking services.

Akismet
Help your visitor promote your website or blog. Put the AddThis Social Bookmarking Widget on your site or blog, so any visitor can easily bookmark it. The widget works with all popular bookmarking services.

FeedBurner FeedSmith
Originally authored by Steve Smith, this plugin detects all ways to access your original WordPress feeds and redirects them to your FeedBurner feed so you can track every possible subscriber.

FireStats
Statistics plugin for WordPress.

Google XML Sitemaps
This plugin will generate a sitemaps.org compatible sitemap of your WordPress blog which is supported by Ask.com, Google, MSN Search and Yahoo.

Got Banners
Got Banners is a simple plugin for rotating banners (especially 125 x 125px) like on TechCrunch.com & GotChance.com. Unlike other banner rotators, Got Banners rotate all of the banners putting them in a random order each time.

Kontera Integration
This plugin adds the Kontera script to the bottom of the page. Also you can choose which posts to omit from targeting, this is very useful when you use PayPerPost.

Login LockDown
Adds some extra security to WordPress by restricting the rate at which failed logins can be re-attempted from a given IP range.

Maintenance Mode
Adds a splash page to your blog that lets visitors know your blog is down for maintenance. Logged in administrators get full access to the blog including the front-end.

Permalink Redirect
Permalink Redirect ensures that pages and entries are always accessed via the permalink. Otherwise, a 301 redirect will be issued.

Post Template
A plugin that allows you to create post templates in order to save time writing posts having the same structure.

RSS Feed Signature
Add a customised signature or tag-line to your RSS feed(s).

Share This
Let your visitors share a post/page with others. Supports e-mail and posting to social bookmarking sites.

Show Top Commentators
Encourage more feedback and discussion from readers, by rewarding them every time they post a comment! Readers with the most comments are displayed on your WordPress blog, with their names (linked to their website if they provided one).

Snap Shots™ Plugin
Add preview Snap Shots to your blog when visitors hover over a link.

Subscribe To Comments
Allows readers to receive notifications of new comments that are posted to an entry.

this.player
Replaces specific codes in the post with a Flash based media player. Supports FLV video, SWF movies and MP3 audio.

TLA InLinks
Text Link Ads InLinks program sells links within your blog posts.

WordPress Automatic Upgrade
WordPress Automatic Upgrade allows a user to automatically upgrade the WordPress installation to the latest one provided by wordpress.org using the 5 steps provided in the WordPress upgrade instructions.

WordPress Database Backup
On-demand backup of your WordPress database.

wp-cache
Very fast cache module. It’s composed of several modules, this plugin can configure and manage the whole system.

WP-ContactForm
WP Contact Form is a drop in form for users to contact you. It can be implemented on a page or a post. It currently works with WordPress 2.0+. The plugin was originally developed by Ryan Duff but has been modified by Doug Karr to require a challenge question and response to fight spam as well as some other features.

WP Back Links
A plugin to track your backlinks and to help get more back links.

WordPress trick:
Not too many WordPress beginners know you can alter the [More…] tag.  But you can make it display whatever you like.

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