8 Must-Have WordPress Plugins

Here are 8 must-have WordPress plugins:

1. Akismet - By far one of the best spam filters around. My only problem with it’s rate of false negatives is quite high, and it is quite a pain to go looking for a single legit comment in a spam bucket filled with hundreds. Despite that, it hardly ever misses a spam comment.

2. Code Auto Escape - If you’re planning on posting any sort of source code on your WordPress blog, you need this plugin. By default, WordPress likes to escape everything itself, which can cause source code to mess up. This plugin avoids that, by properly handling any code inside the code tag.

3. Digital Fingerprint - A useful plugin for adding a signature at the end of your posts for your RSS feed. This is what I use to add the nice “hit the splogger over the head with a shovel” message on the Nusuni Dot Com feed. You can even add in a unique fingerprint for your blog posts and search on Google with it - a great way of tracking down sploggers.

4. FeedBurner FeedSmith - A plugin that automatically forwards all users who access your WordPress RSS feed to your FeedBurner Feed. Don’t have one? It isn’t that hard to set up. With FeedBurner you can track statistics like how many people are subscribed to your blog, which feed readers they use, etc.

5. Google Sitemap Generator - Google Sitemaps are an excellent way of informing the Google Bot about all the pages on your website. As an added bonus, other search engines like Ask.com use it as well. This plugin will automatically generate the sitemap and ping Google to inform it of any changes. More info on Sitemaps later on in this series.

6. Subscribe To Comments - Adds a nice e-mail subscription option when you leave a comment on your blog. A great way of letting your users stay up to date on comments.

7. WP-Cache - Takes a lot of the load off of your server by caching your WordPress data. This will keep WordPress from having to do dozens of MySQL queries every time someone loads a page on your blog. A good way to prevent your site from getting taken down by a Digg.com front-page.

8. WP-Grins - Makes it easier to add in little smiley faces like this into your post. Adds the icons on the Write Post page and it can be added above the comments field.

Stay tuned for even more Back To The Basics posts.

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