Determining the best Wordpress plugins obviously has a degree of individual judgement and dependence on what exactly you want your Wordprss installation to be able to do. From my perspective, I generally want my blog to rank well, be easy to navigate and allow me to integrate different media types.
I’ve already dealt with the SEO plugins I use, and I have tried a lot of WP plugins, so here are the others that I just can’t do without. All of these plugins work on Wordpress 2.61 and earlier versions unless stated (I know, because I use them).
The aLinks plugin is fantastic and the first one I setup every time. It basically allows you to input “keyphrases” and links, so that every time a word or phrase appears in any post or page on your blog, it changes it to the link you want. You can set it up to link multiple times or just once on a page, specify targets (like new windows) and use it for external links and internal links. Essential.
If you allow people to comment on posts, then Akismet is a spam protector plugin that you have to have, although I think it’s now a default plugin anyway. There is also a myCapcha plugin you can use in tandem with Aksimet that apparently is good, but I couldn’t get it to work on Wordpress 2.61.
This plugin allows you to import RSS and XML feeds on a scheduled basis, although you have to identify the feeds you want. You can set it up to create new posts from items, or to import all new items in a feed into one post. You set the time schedule, leave it alone and it does all the rest for you, so your blog grows while you eat chocolate and watch TV.
There are a few Youtube plugins that allow you to embed videos from YT, but this is the easiest. You simply add the link of the Youtube video into your post, changing the “http” to “httpv” in the link and it embeds it. You can also use the Youtube borders as I have in this music post.
If you have a lot of posts in your blog and find it a headache making bulk changes, or want a way to quick-edit the categories, slug, date/time etc, then this plugin is great. It provides a quick edit link by each post that loads the esssentail info you can edit in-line. Really quick to use.
As I write this isn’t working in Wordpress 2.61, but in previous versions it’s a really simple tool that works like aLinks (above), but using your Blogroll. When the text of a link in your blogroll appears in a post, it links the first instance to the site.
A very handy tool that you can use manually to back up the whole database, or set on a daily / weekly / monthly schedule. It can email the backup to you or store it in a directory. Essential.