I’ve installed and configured quite a few wordpress blogs in my time. During this time, I’ve compiled a core of 10 plugins which I install with every wordpress site I work with – some of which make it easier to track and manage readers, some help me to categorize and create posts, and more: 
Akismet – Nowadays, (I’m dating myself here in internet-land) Akismet comes preinstalled in wordpress, you just have to configure it with your WordPress.com API key. (FYI – find your API key by reading this) Akismet has been around for a long time, but it’s still the best spam filter for WordPress.
All in One SEO Pack – WordPress is fantastic for search engine optimization, but it’s difficult to change the meta settings for singular posts manually. This plugin allows you to change the description for each page, including keywords, meta description (the part that comes up in search engines) and more. The best part is it’s very simple to use as it’s placed on every write page.
GoCodes – Do you give out links to your blog posts? If so, GoCodes will help make this simpler and more effective. Let’s say, for example, you were going to link to this article – the full link would be http://www.trinityjacobs.com/blog/2008/08/06/10-must-have-plugins-for-wordpress/. What a PAIN to type out, right? However, if you’re using GoCodes, you can shorten that link to make it easier on you and your readers – for example, it would be trinityjacobs.com/go/10-Wordpress-Plugins. This great tool also works to shorten and track click-throughs with any affiliate links you may have.
Google Analytics Plugin – Google Analytics is a free website statitistics program from Google. It’s robust and has all the tools you need to track your website visitors – the only issue is getting the code placed correctly on the page. This plugin will allow you to just enter your GA information in one area, and it will immediately propogate on the pages for you.
In Series – This is a new plugin for me, but it’s a fantastic tool. When you’re writing a series of posts, it can be tiresome to create the series links for each article. Instead of fooling around with it, use In Series, a simple tool which allows you to specify with each post a) if the post belongs in a series b) the name of the series c)what number the post is in the series. THEN, it automatically adds the links into your finished post! (And, if you upload the entire series at once to be published later, it won’t show the links for the future posts until the articles are live on the site!)
Simple Tags – The great thing about this plugin is that it allows you to enter tags directly into the writing interface (it can even display your most commonly used tags to choose from), and then it takes those tags to create a ‘related posts’ list at the end of each entry for the user to explore.
Sociable – Sociable adds user-defined social networking buttons to the end of every post, thus allowing your readers to easily Digg, Stumble, or otherwise share the information with others.
Twitter Widget – It’s no secret that I’m a newly-appointed Twitter addict – It’s a great networking medium and I’ve found a lot of like-minded entrepreneurs over there. The Twitter widget allows you to place your most recent twitter posts in your sidebar. (I’ve gotten quite a few Twitter Followers this way)
What Would Seth Godin Do? – This is a fantastic plugin! For the first 5 times a visitor comes to your site, it embedds a message (see top of post) that urges you to follow the rss feed. After 5 vists, it welcomes the visitor back. It’s a great way to get your readers to take action without being intrusive.
Feedburner Plugin – Feedburner is a great tool to help track your RSS readers, it gives you an overall count of subscribers plus some subscriber data – much like Google Analytics, but less robost and exclusively for your RSS feed (which Analytics doesn’t track). In order to get this to work, however, you have to replace all your RSS feed links with the feedburner RSS feed link, which can be a hassle if you’re not a WordPress Coding Wizard. Thankfully, the Feedburner plugin automatically changes all RSS feed links from the default WordPress version to the Feedburner version, with only a little configuration in the settings panel. (Feedburner was purchased by Google about a year ago… hopefully, they’ll integrate this functionality with their Analytics program.)
Do you have any plugin suggestions? Let us know in the comments below!
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