10 Must Have Wordpress Plugins

You have been blogging maybe for some time now, and realize that something is just not working out for you, or things just have to get a little bit easier. This is why developers have written code for what we call plugins. Most of them are to make our work easier and upgrade our wordpress blog with some "must have" features. Below is a list of 'must have' Wordpress plugins, that I have been using for some time now, and they really perform well.

1. Akismet - If you are tired of receiving spam in your blog`s comments this plugin is what you really need. Akismet is one of the best spam-fighting services that is different from others, it checks the content of the comment anonymously with an online server, to determine whether it is spam or not. I have been using it for a while now, and can tell is something you must have in your wordpress plugins list.

Donwload Akismet Plugin

2. Related Posts Plugin - This wordpress plugin allows you to show a list of related posts either after or before each of your post. This will increase the stickiness of your blog.One great tool to increase your overall page views and link the posts one to another as well. This plugin will output a series of related entries based on keyword matching.You can set the number of posts to show up.

Download Related Posts Plugin

3. Sitemap Generator Plugin - We all know what google is an how important is to rank well in the search engines. To do so we need a site-map. This plugin helps the search engines crawl easier your site by creating a site-map. This is not just another XML site-map plugin but rather a sitemap generator which is highly customizable from its own options page in the WordPress admin panel. Some of its features include: support for multi-level categories and pages, category/page exclusion, multiple-page generation with navigation, permalink support, choose what to display, what order to list items in, show comment counts and/or post dates, and much more. In other words a must have wordpress plugin.

Download Site Map Generator Plugin

4. Social Bookmarks Plugin - Come on you have seen the social buttons on many blogs at the end of each post. This can be easily done by installing the social bookmarks plugin.It automatically ads a list of compliant graphic links at the end of your posts and/or pages that allow your visitors to easily submit them in a number of social bookmarking sites and social media sites. Furthermore, the plugin ads a page in the WordPress admin section that lets you customize it.You can easily change the design of the buttons and their placement.This is one of the easiest ways to spread your content to the world. You can customize which social networks will appear under each of your posts, you can either have 3 of them or more.

Download Social Bookmarks Plugin

5. FeedSmith Plugin - This Plugin allows you easily monitor your RSS readers and use the services of FeedBurner. FeedSmith redirects all your RSS Feeds to a single FeedBurner feed so you can know exactly how many people have subscribed to your RSS feed. This plugin has also been updated by FeedBurner.

Download FeedSmith Plug-in

6. Smart Youtube Video - Smart Youtube is one of the greatest plugins I have seen so far for playing Youtube videos on your blog. Youtube Plugin that allows you to easily insert Youtube videos in your post, in the comments section and in the RSS feed. It allows you to correctly embed the videos within the posts area. The great part of this plugin is that, youtube videos will show up in the RSS feeds as well which normally doesn`t happen.

Download Smart YouTube Plugin

7. All in One SEO Pack Plugin. Search engine traffic is what most bloggers want. There are some things to be optimized first before having organic traffic to any one blog. All in One SEO Pack does some of the work required to rank well in the search engines and bring traffic to your blog.This plug-in optimizes your WordPress blog for search engines by letting you define your home page title, description and keywords, define your post, page, category, archive, tag and search title formats , use categories for meta keywords, avoid indexing of duplicate content, auto-generate descriptions.

Download All in One SEO Pack Plugin

8. Broken Links Checker. You might have wondered if you have any broken links through out your blog, this might often happen due to a high number of sites that are off-line, yet this plugin is the solution. So what exactly does this plugin do? This plugin monitors your blog and finds broken links. It checks your posts and pages to detect links that don't work and missing images, it will also notify you on the Dashboard if any are found. Broken links checker will make broken links display differently in posts. New/modified posts are checked , you can easily unlink or edit broken links in the manage area / broken links tab How else could you check lets say 1000 posts ? There isn`t really another way but this plugin.

Download Broken Links Checker Plugin

9. Peel Away Ad Plug-in. You might have noticed some blogs or web pages with a flipping corner at the top right hand side of the pages.This is the Peel Away Ad plugin. It is actually an advertising java script , that automatically inserts a flipping corner at the top corners of your blog. It can be easily customized in your dashboard, in order to show more than one ad at the time, by rotating them. Peel Away Ad is a lot more friendly than popping windows, that for some users are very annoying. It can a have a really high click through rate because of its positioning and design. There are some services that are ready to design your own ad to look more professional and give the best results in your advertising efforts.

Download Peel Away Ad Plugin

10. WP Gravatar - This is the best way to build up your blog`s community and let users interact between them. It also brings your comment section to life by inserting 20 x 20 icons.The size is also customizable. This plugin lets you use Gravatar, MyBlogLog, OpenAvatar, Wavatar, Identicon, monsterID or Favico.ico.

Download WP-Gravatar Plugin

Hope you all find these plug-ins useful. I will be updating the list soon.Please do leave you comments below, tell me how this information was useful to you.