When I first started using WordPress, I hadn’t the slightest idea of how to use plugins and many a times the functions that I needed to incorporate were already available out there in the forms of plugins (which I came to know a little later!).

Anyway, this is for those people who are starting out with blogging and who have chosen WordPress as their publishing platform. If you are new to blogging, you can read the detailed article about how and where to start blogging.

This article continues the direction shown by the previous article and takes you a step further. Not only do you get to know the various plugins that I use, you can use only those which are relevant for your requirements.

Here is the list of plugins that I use and their functionality (The plugins are listed alphabetically and do not represent any ranking or preferential listing):

1. ActiveLink v0.1.0: Easily set links to wikipedia definitions in multiple languages when creating or editing posts
   By Henning Schaefer.
2. AddThis Social Bookmarking Widget (drop-down) v1.2: Help your visitor promote your website or blog. Put the AddThis Social Bookmarking Widget on your site or blog, so any visitor can easily bookmark it. The widget works with all popular bookmarking services. By AddThis.com.
3. Akismet v2.0.2: Akismet checks your comments against the Akismet web service to see if they look like spam or not.
   By Matt Mullenweg.
4. AntiLeech v1.7: Prevents errant parties from stealing your content and bandwidth. By Owen Winkler.
5. Bad Behavior v2.0.10: Denies automated spambots access to your PHP-based Web site. By Michael Hampton.
6. Bad Behavior Stats v2.1: Displays number of blocked access attempts by Bad Behavior. (Compatible with both BB1.x and BB2.x). By Ajay D’Souza.
7. Email Users v2.3: Allows the administrator to send an e-mail to the blog users. This plugin is using PhpMailer. By Vincent Prat.
8. Feedburner Feed Replacement v2.1: Forwards all feed traffic to Feedburner while creating a randomized feed for Feedburner to pull from. By Steve Smith.
9. Google Sitemaps v2.7.1: Generates a Google compliant sitemap of your WordPress blog. By Arne Brachhold.
10. MyBlogLog Widget v2.0: Adds MyBlogLog widget to your blog. By MyBlogLog Team.
11. Page Link Manager v0.3: Adds admin panel to choose which pages appear in the site navigation. By Garrett Murphey.
12. Quick SMS v2.11: Allows your visitors to SMS messages direct to your mobile phone via email gateways. Many networks & countries now supported, see configuration panel for full list. By Martin Fitzpatrick.
13. Random Redirect v1.0.1: Allows you to create a link to yourblog.example.com/?random which will redirect someone to a random post on your blog, in a StumbleUpon-like fashion. By Matt Mullenweg.
14. Spam Karma v2.3 rc4: Ultimate Spam Killer for WordPress. By dr Dave.
15. Ultimate Tag Warrior v3.14159265: Ultimate Tag Warrior is a tagging plugin, that’s heavy on tag visualisation. By Christine Davis.
16. WordPress Database Backup v1.7: On-demand backup of your WordPress database. By Scott Merrill
17. WordPress Mobile Edition v1.8: Redirect mobile devices to a mobile friendly interface. By Alex King.
18. WP-PostRatings v1.10: Adds an AJAX rating system for your WordPress blog’s post/page. By GaMerZ.

Well, these are the plugins that I use on my blog and they sure are very helpful to me.

In the end it depends for what purpose you need a plugin.

Whenever you opt for a plugin, remember to ask yourself these questions: Does it solve your requirement? Does it add to your site’s features? Does it aid a user and make his experience on your site any better than it already is?

This will let you choose your plugins wisely.

Possibly Related Articles