Pathik Shah

Whenever you install WordPress for your blog, you get only two plugins – Akismet (Anti Spam) and Hello Dolly. You can however install more plugins to extend functionality, you can find a complete list of plugins here: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins

Here is a list of the best WP plugins which I use on my blog. Most of them are very useful and functional and are light- they won’t bog down your WP site / blog.

To install them, just extract the folders to /blog/wp-content/plugins and then log in to your WP Admin Dashboard and select the Plugins tab to select and enable them.

1. All In One SEO Pack

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/all-in-one-seo-pack/

This is the most popular WP Plugin ever. It is just a simple plugin using which you can optimize your posts for search engines by adding the title, description and keywords etc when drafting the post.

2. Google XML Sitemaps

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/google-sitemap-generator/

This plugin creats a Google sitemaps compliant XML-Sitemap of your WordPress blog. It supports all of the WordPress generated pages as well as custom ones. The sitemap gets updated automatically everytime you create a new post. You can submit this sitemap to Google and other search engines for better SEO.

3. Sociable

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/sociable/

This plugin automatically add links to your posts and pages to easily add your pages to 99 popular social bookmarking sites like Digg, Stumble Upon, Del.icio.us etc.

4. Viper’s Video Quicktags

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/vipers-video-quicktags/

You can use this plugin to easily add / embed videos into your blog posts and configure their attributes using a simple box. No need of meddling with any HTML embed codes anymore.

5. AdSense Manager

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/adsense-manager/

AdSense Manager is a WordPress plugin for managing AdSense ads on your blog. It generates code automatically and allows positioning with Widgets.

It includes support for AdSense, AdBrite, AdGridWork, Adpinion, Adroll, Commission Junction, CrispAds, ShoppingAds, Yahoo!PN and WidgetBucks.

6. Google Analytics for WordPress

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/google-analytics-for-wordpress/

This plugin automatically tracks and segments all outbound links from within posts, comment author links, links within comments, blogroll links and downloads. It also allows you to track AdSense clicks, add extra search engines and track image search queries.

7. Dagon Design Sitemap Generator

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/sitemap-generator/

This is a nice plugin which creates a sitemap for your blog. It is highly customizable, you can also link your XML Sitemap to this. It looks better than Google XML sitemaps, you should use both.

8. WP-Stats

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-stats/

This plugin allows you to display your WordPress blog statistics on a page. It can display general stats, plugin stats and top 10 stats.

9. WordPress Related Posts

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wordpress-23-related-posts-plugin/

This plugin will generate related posts via the tags used on your posts, and add the related posts link below each post and to your RSS feeds too.

10. WP Post Views

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-postviews/

This plugin allows you to display the number of times a post has been viewed.