There are more than 12,000 plugins available today for use with WordPress

and more are being created and added to the database daily. All plugins are open-source, meaning that anyone with the knowledge and desire to create a plugin, can.

There are so many great plugins, so this is by no means an exhaustive list of plugins — just some of the basic (and free) ones that I know to be real assets on a WordPress site today.

Plugin Ratings: ** Essential plugins       * Nice plugins to have

1.  * Akismet:

Used by millions, Akismet is quite possibly the best way in the world to protect your site from comment and track-back spam. It keeps your site protected from spam even while you sleep. (There now seems to be a small charge for using this service).

2.  * CommentLuv

This plugin shows a link to the last post on the blog of the person leaving the comment by parsing the feed at their given URL when they leave a comment. Rewards your readers and encourage more comments.

3.  ** Contact Form 7

This is a very good contact-form plugin because it is simple, but flexible. (Use this in place of having your email address visible on your site).

4.  ** Exclude Pages from Navigation

This plugin provides a box on the editing page that when unchecked, will exclude that page from the navigation bar on the front page of your site.  This plugin is handy for content that you only want certain people to see.

5.  * fbLikebutton

Allows you to configure and display the Facebook like button before and/or after each post and/or page depending on how you want it to show on your site

6.  ** FeedBurner FeedSmith

This plugin detects any of the RSS readers that a subscriber might use to access your original WordPress feed and redirects them to your FeedBurner account/feed so they can subscribe to your RSS feed (and you can track subscribers).

7.  ** Fixed Social buttons

Let your visitors make your site popular by sharing your pages via the colorful and attractive social buttons. (The buttons will show up at the bottom of your pages and posts. Visitors can then send YOUR content to THEIR friends on these sites).

8.  ** Google Analytics for WordPress

This plugin makes it simple to add Google Analytics to your WordPress blog, adding many features like custom variables, and tracking of visits to pages, number of visitors per week, month, or even day.
To learn more about Google Analytics, CLICK HERE

9.  ** Google XML Sitemaps

This plugin will generate a special XML sitemap, which will help search engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing and Ask.com to better index your blog.

10.  ** Headspace2 (or All-in-One SEO)

This plugin is a meta-data manager that allows complete control over all SEO needs such as keywords, tags, titles, description, and style sheets.

11.  * If You Liked That…

Using the content of the post currently being viewed as a guide, this plugin shows links to other similar blog posts in the same category as the main post.

12.  ** Insights

The Insights plugin allows you to quickly search for links, images, videos, maps, and news to insert into your blog posts.

13.  * LessThanWeb – Testimonials

Display client testimonials on your blog. Easily manage client testimonials for different products on a single blog by separating them into groups.

14.  ** My Page Order

My Page Order allows you to set the order of pages through a drag and drop interface. (The link to access this feature will show up under Pagesà My Page Order in the dashboard of your site).

15.  * Page Links To

This plugin allows you to create a page (with no content) so that it becomes a link on the navigation bar, but redirects the viewer to another URL. For example, my link “Videos” is on the navigation bar of my site, but when the visitor clicks it, they are re-directed to my YouTube channel. This is an extremely handy plugin.

16.  ** Secure WordPress

This plugin provides extra security for your WordPress site.

17.  * SI CAPTCHA Anti-Spam

This plugin adds CAPTCHA anti-spam methods to WordPress on the comment form, registration form, login, or all. This prevents spam from automated bots.

18.  ** Social Profiles Widget

This plugin/widget allows you to insert social profile icons into your sidebar via a widget. This plugin has great looking icons that, when clicked, will take the visitor to your social media sites.

There are many plugins available that have different “looks and feels” to manage your social media icons/accounts

19.  ** Tweet Meme Re-tweet Button

Adds a button that easily lets you and your visitors to re-tweet your blog posts

20.  ** WordPress Database Backup

This is a very good plugin for creating a backup of your WordPress database.  (Please note: This plugin does not replace the act of going to your hosting company weekly to do a manual backup of your site.)

21.  ** wp-cache

WP-Cache will cache your WordPress posts and pages as static files. Viewers then see these static files reducing the processing load on the server. This can improve performance several hundred times over for static pages.  If your posts/pages have a lot of dynamic content, configuring caching can be more complex. Search for “WordPress cache plugin” for more info.

22.  * WPtouch

A plugin that formats your site with a mobile theme for visitors on Apple iPhone / iPod touch, Google Android, Blackberry Storm and Torch, Palm Pre and other touch-based smart-phone

PS Most developers update their plugins regularly, but you may run into one or two that don’t. Most often you won’t know until you update to a new version of WordPress, or you update other installed plugins. Then you might find that your plugins are conflicting with each other, or with the new WordPress version.  If this happens, all you can do is un-install the plugin and do some research to find another similar plugin.

What are your favorite plugins and why?  I’d love to see what everyone else is doing on their WordPress sites. And I’m just geeky enough to want to install them to see what they do. Leave me your suggestions in the comment area below.

If you need assistance with the installation of these or any other plugins, contact me. I have WordPress support packages.