Wordpress is a great tool for blogging—it’s easy to setup, the interface makes it easy to use, and there are tons of plugins you can download to add new features. Unfortunately when you’re just getting started with Wordpress, the sheer number of plugins can make it hard to know which ones to start with.
After more than a little trial and error and a lot of looking at discussions of other people’s favourite plugins, I’ve found 11 that seem to stand above the rest. Here are my suggestions for the 11 plugins you should consider adding to your blog.
- Adsense-Deluxe
Place Google AdSense ads in your posts, or as part of your template. This plugin ensures you do not have more than 3 ads displayed at once—part of Google’s terms of use. - del.icio.us – Bookmark this!
This plugin lets you easily add a “Bookmark this page on del.icio.us” link to your blog or individual articles. Del.icio.us is a personal favourite, and a great way to save, organize and find new links. - Digg This
Detects if one of your articles has been linked on digg.com and adds a link to the entry. This might not be as useful for blogs that are unlikely to ever be bookmarked there—but for me it’s a nice find. - Google Sitemaps
This generator will create a Google compliant sitemap of your WordPress blog. Having a Google sitemap can help keep your site as up-to-date in Google’s indexes as possible. - Feedburner Feed Replacement
Forwards all feed traffic to Feedburner.com so you can make use of their various advanced features for feed presentation and subscriber analysis. - Gravatar
Show the custom icons associated with the email addresses of users commenting on your entries. This is a great service more people should sign up for. - Head META Description
Some search engines display the Description meta data for a page in search results. Since Wordpress normally uses the same meta data for all the pages on your site, this is a problem. This plugin builds a dynamic Description meta tag for each entriy based on the page content itself. - Optimal Title
Moves the position of the ‘separator’ to after the title rather than before, letting you put the title of your post before your blogs name in the title tag for an entry. - Related Posts
Displays a list of related entries based on keyword matches. This is a good way to encourage visitors to read more of the content on your blog. - WP-Amazon
WP-Amazon adds the ability to search and include items from Amazon to your entries. Great if you’re an Amazon affiliate, but also a good way to add some extra images to your blog entries. - WP-ContactForm
This plugin creates a drop in form for users to contact you. It can be implemented on a page or a post.

Hey man, Jared from across the road here! I thought I’d take a look at that feedburner plugin. Thanks for the great collection of plugins. I’m gonna tag this post through delicious for future reference. Tell your wife thanks for the awesome butter chicken!
I encourage you to go test my plugins
http://rudd-o.com/projects/
You might find one of them worthy of your 11-item list
have a great day!
thank you for your work
i try to find something at google.com and take it on your site…thanks
very interesting, but I don’t agree with you
Idetrorce
very interesting.
i’m adding in RSS Reader
Keep up the good work! 10q