One of the great features of the WordPress blogging platform is its extendability through the use of easy-to-install plugins.
The top plugins for me are ones that help build community, improve usability, and help augment the marketing aspect of the site.
Web 2.0
- Sociable - Allows you to add social bookmarking buttons like Digg, Reddit, Del.icio.us to the end of each post. Completely configurable for which sites are listed and look and feel.
- Subscribe to Comments - Allows users to subscribe to specific comment feeds and notifies them via email of any additional comments on that particular post. Great way for users to stay involved in posts that are important or meaningful to them.
- WP-Email - Allows users to email a post to a friend or colleague and help spread your content to new sets of eyeballs.
Navigation & Usability
- Related Posts - Displays a list of related content (based on wordpress tags) for the current post. Helps users to find other content that might be relevant to them as well as improving the spiderability of your sites deeper links.
- Get Recent Comments - Displays a list of the most recent comments that have been posted on your blog. Great for building community around your users.
- WP-Print - Provides an easy way for users to print out a particular post from your blog by stripping the site layout and styling from the post.
Web Metrics
- Popularity Contest - Tracks your most popular content so you can manage which parts of your site are most visited (or referenced most externally). Also allows for you to display a list of the top content on your site to help users find your top content.
- Google Analytics for WordPress - Builds your Google Analytics tracking details into the framework of your site. This allows for advanced tagging and also makes sure that your content is being tracked, no matter which theme you are using at any given point in time.
Search Engine
- All in One SEO Pack - Improves your site and post search engine optimization by giving you complete control over what is displayed in your title tags, meta tags, and the like. You can customize as much as you want or just let it do its own thing and build in these items based on your post’s content.
- Google XML SiteMaps - Automatically generates and updates your Google Sitemap as new content is created.
Bonus
- Database Backup - Automatically backs up your database content for that rainy day when your database gets corrupt or you lose your data. Can be configured to automatically email an archive of your database or copy it to a specific location on your web host. Highly recommended.
