Essential WordPress Plugins

Since it has been some time since I last posted about WordPress Plugins I thought that it would be a good idea to give you a quick summary of which plugins I now consider essential for any WordPress blog.

AddToAny - This allows your blog readers to easily share your blogs on various social bookmarking sites, via email or add a bookmark to their browser. This plugin is responsible for the Share/Save button you see at the end of all my posts here.

Dagon Design Sitemap Generator - This plugin allows you to create a sitemap for your blog which gives your visitors an easy way to find exactly what they’re looking for.

FeedBurner FeedSmith - If you’re using FeedBurner to manage your blog’s RSS feed then this plugin will automatically redirect all requests for your RSS feed to your FeedBurner-managed feed so that you can easily keep track of your subscribers.

Google XML Sitemap Generator - This creates a XML sitemap for your blog which is supported by major search engines such as Google, Yahoo, MSN Live Search and Ask.com.

Platinum SEO Pack - This is a replacement for the popular AllInOne SEO Pack plugin and includes a lot more options to help optimise your blog for the search engines.

Privacy Policy - This plugin creates an Adsense-compliant Privacy Policy page for your blog.

Scoutle - If you’re using Scoutle to attract more readers to your blog then this plugin will allow you to add your scout as a widget in your sidebar.

Twitter Tools - This allows you to easily integrate your blog with Twitter and includes options to automatically post tweets whenever you make a blog post, automatically post your tweets to your blog and the ability to show your latest tweets in a sitebar widget. Personally I use TwitterFee and Ping.fm to syndicate my blog posts as I described in my previous post and just use this plugin to display my latest tweets on my blog.

What Would Seth Godin Do? - This plugin allows you to display a customisable message to new visitors to your blog which is a good way of encouraging new readers to subscribe to your RSS feed.

WordPress Popular Posts - This allows you to show your most popular blog posts in a widget such as the one I am using right at the top of this blog.

More Blog Posts About WordPress Plugins

• Best WordPress Plugins
• Most Popular WordPress Plugins
• WordPress Plugins Essentials
• 21 WordPress Plugins You Must Use
• WordPress Plugins - Five most useful WordPress Plugins for your website