I’m regularly running about 10 websites now, 8 of them with the utterly spundacious WordPress platform. Here are my essentials plugins to install onto a brand new WordPress installation, if only for my own reference…
P.S. This will be a movable feast – if I find better ones, or someone points out how wrong I am, it’ll be updated accordingly.
Administration Plugins:
Akismet: Comes with WordPress – enable it, and flick the bird at spammers.
Oneclick: You’ll want to updated and add new plugins and themes. This plugin installs and updates with just one click. Awesome timesaver.
Redirection: Creates server-side page redirections. If you change a page location, it notices and redirects. If it notices people trying to access non-existent pages, it can redirect them accordingly. Highly automatic, highly underrated, massively useful.
Multiple administrators/contributors?:
Audit Trail: If you’ve got multiple WordPress users/contributors, spy on them. It’s fun, and enables you to keep control of access.
Role Manager: Fine tune who has access to what.
Performance:
WP Super Cache: Speeds up the WordPress engine, and enables you to be Dugg without collapsing and being called names.
Spreading the word:
All in One SEO Pack: There are many plugins that try to help get you up the Google charts – but this does everything that’s needed, straight out of the box. Essential.
Feedsmith: Use Feedburner? Feedsmith magically redirects people to your Feedburner feed without you having to lift a finger.
Google XML Sitemaps: Google loves you even more if you have Sitemaps. This plugin will do them all for you, automatically.
Other spunky but essential ones:
SCF2 Contact Form: generates a Contact Form automatically, checks for spam and a whole lot else. Simple but powerful.
Let me know if you have others, or want to put me straight on a few of the plugins!