When starting a Wordpress blog, it’s always important to have an idea in mind of how you’re going to piece it all together. Generally speaking, when I set up a new blog, I pretty much use the same plugins every time, as they seem to be “essential” to the overall operation of the blog.
I have a folder on my desktop called “essential plugins”, and now it’s just part of the process, but I thought I would share the plugins I use with you, just in case you haven’t heard of one of them or used one yet. Most of them have been around for a while, and are pretty popular, not to mention they currently work with Wordpress 2.5 (which is very important).
Here Are My 10 Essential Wordpress Plugins:
1. All-In-One SEO Pack - This plugin should be installed on every blog out there. It’s the first one I think of and the first one I upload to a new blog. Reason being? It allows you to quickly perform “on page” SEO for not only your individual wordpress pages, but also for each post, which in the search engines eyes is also a page. Sometimes I may want to come up with a creative title for the readers, but the all in one seo pack allows you to use search engine friendly titles and descriptions for the search engines. It’s good stuff!
2. Secure Contact Form - Every website/blog needs a contact form, and while many bloggers have their own personal choices, this one is the one I use for pretty much all of my blogs. It’s easy to install (just a few clicks), and even more easy to use. I like the security features of it, which are in place to prevent spam (which can be horrendous on blogs).
3. Wordpress Database Backup - I know this one isn’t as exciting as some of the others, but please believe me when I say you need this! Many times this plugin alone has literally saved me countless hours, and large amounts of money. You can set it to auto backup your blog daily, weekly, or whatever you prefer. At least do a weekly backup, so if all is lost, you’ll only be out a weeks worth of posts. I also use this to extract the database in a friendly Wordpress compatible version if I transfer to another person or host. Set it and forget it.
4. Brian’s Threaded Comments - This cool plugin allows you to have one of those nifty comment sections that allow a person (or me) to reply directly to a comment, instead of posting below it. You can have the comment replies nest as deep as you want, but I think the default is 3 replies, and that’s what I leave it on. Installing this plugin isn’t hard…it’s the typical upload–>activate. But you have to replace your themes comments.php form with one supplied with the plugin. That’s it!
5. Google XML Sitemaps - This is another one of those semi-boring plugins, but a necessity. This plugin (which just takes uploading and activating), is what I use to generate a clean and search engine friendly sitemap xml file, which I submit to my Google Webmaster Tools account. Hey, anytime I can make it easier on the Google spiders to crawl my site, I’m game.
6. Spam Karma 2 - Every blog needs a spam killer, and while a lot of bloggers use the default Akismet, I trash that one and upload Spam Karma 2. I love SK2, because it seriously catches everything. There are many options you can tweak to set different karma levels, but I usually never mess with it. I keep it default and it’s worked wonderfully every time.
7. Sociable - While I do not currently use sociable on this blog, it’s only because the theme kind of has some of the sociable functions built in to it, so it wouldn’t make much sense to have the same thing twice. What Sociable does is allow you to put little pretty social bookmarking icons beneath every post and/or page to make it easy for your readers to submit your article or post to the big social bookmarking sites (Digg, SU, Sphinn, Reddit, del.icio.us, etc…). It’s another one that you just upload, activate, and configure which icons you want it to show.
8. CommentLuv - This sweet plugin is a new favorite of mine, due to the fact that it encourages more commenting on your posts. Commenting fell by the wayside for a while, until this plugin came out, which, in a nutshell, pulls up the last post (if possible), of the blogger who leaves a comment. So for instance, if you have a blog, and you comment on mine, it will attempt to pull the link to your latest blog post under your comment. So that way, people may see it and you just might gain a few new readers just from commenting on someone else’s blog. Pretty cool, huh?
9. Adsense Deluxe - While not all bloggers show Adsense ads on their blogs, a lot do. Obviously on this one, I am, but on some others I leave it out depending on what the goals of the particular blog are. Regardless, if you want to easily implement Google Adsense into your blog without much hassle, check out Adsense Deluxe. It’s easy to work with, and you also have the option of showing Yahoo Publisher Network ads too.
10. UsersOnline - This plugin may be more material than others, but I’ve really grown to like the UserOnline plugin. It simply shows you how many people and/or bots are on your blog at any given time. It seems like more of an ornament, but I find it useful when I submit a post to a social bookmarking site, I can immediately see if people are on my site. It’s really fun when you get a big Stumble and have several hundred on your site at one time - it’s quite motivating! Anyway, installation is easy, and if you need to feed your ego, this plugin will help do that 
