I have installed quite a few wordpress plugins in the last 3 months to keep this blog running. I would strongly recommend these plugins to any blogger and they might be useful for the new blogger.
Add Meta Tags
Add Meta Tags plugin 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. The plugin can be set to add description or keywords automatically to each post or you can these to each post while creating the post from custom fields.
Ad Rotator
Ad Rotator plugin allows you to rotate banner ads randomly at a specified location in your blog.
Akismet
Akismet checks your comments against the Akismet web service to see if they look like spam or not. You need a WordPress.com API key to use it.
Automattic Stats:
Automattic Statsplugin is earlier available on wordpress.com blogs and recently it was released for self hosted wordpress blogs. It shows some pretty stats.
Better Comments Manger
Better Comments Manager is an extension of the default WordPress comments manager. It will allow you to reply to your blog comments from the wordpress admin panel.
Comment Relish
Comment relish plugin sends an e-mail message to users who comment on your website who have never commented before. The message can be customized within the plugin’s preferences.
Feedburner Feed Replacement
Feedburner Feed Replacement plugin simply forwards all your feed traffic to FeedBurner. The plugin will detect all ways to access your feed (e.g. http://www.yoursite.com/feed/ or http://www.yoursite.com/wp-rss2.php, etc.), and redirect them to your FeedBurner feed so you can track every possible subscriber. It will forward for your main posts feed, and optionally your main comments feed as well.
Google Sitemaps
Google Sitemaps plugin generates a XML-Sitemap compliant sitemap of your WordPress blog. This format is supported by Google, YAHOO and MSN Search.
IImage Browser
IImage Browser plugin makes easier to add images to your posts, you can upload images via a form, navigate through sub directories and create thumbnails for large images. With one click you can add the image code to your post.
MightyAdsense
Mighty Adsense plugin allow you to add Google adsense ads to your posts or pages with out modifying the templates.
MyAvatars
MyAvatars Plugin shows mybloglog user avatars in comments
Random Redirect
Random Redirect Plugin adds a stumbleupon like functionality to your blog. When a visitor clicks the random post link it displays a random post from your blog.
Related Posts
Related Posts pluign shows a series of related entries based on keyword matching.
Secure and Accessible PHP Contact Form
Secure and Accessible PHP Contact Form plugin is useful for adding anti-spam and secure contact form for your blog. You can customize the plugin easily with options.
Share This
Share This plugin will make it easier for your visitors to share your articles on social networking sites. Supports e-mail and posting to social bookmarking sites.
Show Top Commentators
Show Top Commentatros plugin shows a list of top commentors on your blog with a link to their own site. This plugin is useful for encouraging comments on your blog.
Sphere Related Content Widget:
Sphere Related Content Widget connects with an icon link at the end of your blog posts. When a reader clicks on the icon link, we find blog and media articles related to your blog posts.
Subscribe To Comments
Subscribe to Comments is a plugin that allows commenters on your blog to check a box before commenting and get e-mail notification of further comments.
Ultimate Tag Warrior:
Ultimate Tag Warrior Plugin allows to add relevant tags to your posts and coverts all categories as tags. With a simple markup you can convert any word in your post as a tag, making it easy for visitors to find posts related to a word or tag. You can display a nice tag cloud on your blog to give an idea to your visitors what your blog is about.
What Would Seth Godin Do:
What Would Seth Godin Do plugin displays a small welcome message for the new visitors of your blog. The message can be customized according to your needs, in this blog it displays If you’re new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed or Email alerts. Thanks for visiting!”. The plugin uses cookies to see whether the visitor is new or returning, so when a user clears cookies it will show up again.
Great compilation Ram. But I have couple of quick suggestion. You may need to try out cForms instead of Secure form. You will love it. And instead of MightyAdsense you can try Adsense Deluxe.
@Benedict
I will check out cForms,
Is it possible to include ads on homepage below the posts with Adsense deluxe?
I believe that can be achieved by only adding Adsense Deluxe elements to the template.
For added SEO juice you should try SEO Title Tags…I think they jsut released a new version that makes your titles google friendly.
Thanks for sharing this one! I think I’ll have to try Ad Rotator.
You should try out SEO title tags. Furthur instead of using Share this, you can use images of the popular sites and give a link as I have done. Its more preferable than share this.
Thats a good compilation and looks like I use most of them 🙂
@matt
Thanx for commenting, i will try this plugin
I will try SEO title tags.
Yaah ur right Share This is good but most of the links in that plugin are useless, i will put something like yours.
@ Mr.Byte thanx for the link back
@Shankar
You should try Ad Rotator, good for rotating few banners
Thanks for sharing it buddy . I am going to install Mighty adsense .
Will be useful when I move to WordPress. Thanks. Stumbled.
@Madhur
Welcome and glad it is useful to u:-)
Thank you for the link 😉
@Napolux
Welcome 🙂
Thank you for this awesome list… Webbot is now toying with some of these.. We love your blog to btw! Keep up at the awesome work!
-LB