Philoking.comfrom Jason Burns’ perspective…

Before I start a flame war with people, I don’t want people to think that this is a be all end all list of the best plugins to use for Wordpress. These are simply the ones that I have found very effective and use on this blog itself. I will take the list of plugins from my Plugin Management page, and go into a little detail about what each plugin is, and why I like it…

Akismet 2.1.2
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. You can review the spam it catches under “Comments.” This plugin is one you can’t live without. It’s a default Wordpress plugin and should be the first thing you enable. To this date mine has caught over 50,000 spam comments.

All in One SEO Pack 1.4.3.8
Out-of-the-box SEO for your Wordpress blog. By uberdose. This is a new one I am trying out that helps you make sure your page info is search engine friendly. Of course installing this plugin isn’t enough, but it does help.

Audio player 1.2.3
Highly configurable single track mp3 player. By Martin Laine. I use this plugin to insert audio clips in posts. I use Podpress below for podcasts, but for an audio clip, this is a handy one to have. You simply insert a tag with the location of the file and the player displays on the post.

Feed Locations 1.0
Set the location of the RSS and Atom feeds in options. Enables the use of services like FeedBurner without editing templates. By Glenn Slaven. I use feedburner for my feeds, this plugin redirects any feed request to make sure they are all coming from Feedburner, this helps me track active subscribers accurately.

Get Recent Comments 2.0.2
Display the most recent comments or trackbacks with your own formatting in the sidebar. Visit Options/Recent Comments after activation of the plugin. By Krischan Jodies. It’s always nice to show that your site is active, having this on your front page is a great way to show that users are involved in your website.

Google XML Sitemaps 3.0.2.1
This plugin will generate a Sitemaps.org compatible sitemap of your WordPress blog which is supported by Ask.com, Google, MSN Search and YAHOO. Configuration Page By Arne Brachhold. If you are running a blog and not submitting sitemaps to the major search engines you better start now. This plugin is all you need to create great sitemaps.

Most Commented 1.4
Retrieves a list of the posts with the most comments. Modified for Last X days — by DJ Chuang www.djchuang.com By Nick Momrik. Another thing that’s valuable past showing active commenters, is showing posts that are very popular. This tool, visible at the bottom of my page, shows which posts are the most discussed.

Peter’s Custom Anti-Spam 2.9.8
Stop a lot of spambots from polluting your site by making visitors identify a random word displayed as an image before commenting. You can customize the pool of words to display. Core of the Version 2.0 rewrite by Will Murray. By Peter Keung. Along with Akismet, This plugin keeps me very close to spam free on my blog, I can’t recommend this one high enough.

Podpress 8.8
The Podpress plugin gives you everything you need in one easy plugin to use WordPress for Podcasting. If you are podcasting on Wordpress, use this plugin, period.

Recent Posts 1.07
Returns a list of the most recent posts. By Nick Momrik. I use this plugin to show my most recent posts in my sidebar. Since most of my traffic comes from search engines or links to a specific post, this keeps my fresh content visible to those readers.

Related Posts 2.02
Returns a list of the related entries based on active/passive keyword matches. By Alexander Malov & Mike Lu. This plugin is another great way to make sure your visitors are exposed to more of your content. If you want your users to see more of what you have written on a particular topic, this plugin is great.

runPHP 2.3.1
Allows you to put PHP code into a post and have it eval()’d. By James Van Lommel. Every once in awhile you need to code something up by hand, by default Wordpress won’t parse it, this plugin allows you to indicate that certain posts contain active code. This is handy if you are using some kind of polls or including things in posts.

ST Add Related Posts to Feed .02
Adds Related Posts to your full content feed. Ultimate Tag Warrior or Related Posts is required. Big thanks to Otto42 of ottodestruct.com By Chris Kasten, aka HandySolo. Just like Related posts for my site, this makes sure that my feeders see them too!

Twitter Tools 1.1b1
A complete integration between your WordPress blog and Twitter. Bring your tweets into your blog and pass your blog posts to Twitter. Configure your settings here. By Alex King. This plugin does a lot, but I use it to make sure all the people following me on Twitter see my posts. I can’t wait for a full API to do the same thing with Pownce!

WordPress Database Backup 2.1.5
On-demand backup of your WordPress database. Navigate to Manage → Backup to get started. By Austin Matzko. Backup, seriously folks.

wp-cache 2.1.2
Very fast cache module. It’s composed of several modules, this plugin can configure and manage the whole system. Once enabled, go to “Options” and select “WP-Cache”. By Ricardo Galli Granada. This makes a big difference in your site speed, especially when you get dugg!

WP-Sticky 1.10
Adds a sticky post feature to your WordPress’s blog. Modified from Adhesive by Owen Winkler. By Lester ‘GaMerZ’ Chan. Sometimes you want something to stay on the front page no matter how much you post after it. This plugin does just that.

So that’s all folks. There are obviously tons of other awesome plugins, you can find them at the Wordpress plugin repository. If I have missed any you think someone just can’t live without, please leave them in the comments!