Ten Favorite WordPress Plugins

Now that drivelocity has been up for a couple months now, I’ve had a chance to learn more about WordPress plugins, beyond the standard ones I’d used in the past. I now have ten plugins that I feel are must-haves, so I’ve expanded my Five Favorite WordPress Plugins list to include the new ones, several of which were based on suggestions I received in comments. So, thank you for the tips! If you have any more, please let me know.

So, here is the list, in no particular order, though I did place the newer ones at the top.

1. Akismet – This comment spam prevention plugin, as you probably know, comes pre-installed with WordPress. The hangup for me in activating it is that you need a WordPress API key to use it. To get that, all you need to do is create an account on WordPress.com. If you have an account, you can find it in your Profile. I activated it yesterday and it’s already started blocking spam comments
2. Top Commentators Widget – This is becoming one of my favorite plugins. Top Commentators adds a widget to your sidebar that lists the visitors who have commented the most in whatever duration you select. You can also check here for a list of sites, sorted by PR, who use this plugin. By commenting on these sites, you can wind up on their front page with a link back to your site.
3. CommentLuv – This plugin is showing up more frequently as it’s a good way to provide value to people commenting on your blog. When a visitor comments, CommentLuv can pick up the last post(s) on their blog and provide a secondary link directly to that post. I am grateful for visitors who take the time to comment and this is a way to show my appreciation.
4. DoFollow – WordPress has NoFollow set by default and this plugin remedies that by removing it and allowing search engines to follow links in comments left by visitors. You’ll also notice that I’ve added a “U Comment I Follow” image to the left sidebar to show visitors that there is added benefit to posting comments on drivelocity.
5. Google XML Sitemaps – This plugin creates that sitemap and will help the top search engines index your blog better. While it is called Google XML Sitemaps, the XML-sitemap format was adopted by Yahoo, MSN and Ask.com.
6. Slashdigglicious – See the cute little icons below each blog entry? Those, if you’re not aware, are social bookmarking links to help promote the site. If you find something interesting, please click the icons and vote/add for that entry.
7. Viper’s Video Quicktags – This plugin easily lets me embed videos from YouTube, Google, etc. into my blog posts. Without this, I could only post links and that’s just not very fancy… To use it, you just click a button in the WYSIWYG editor and paste in the URL.
8. WP-ContactForm – I don’t like putting my email address out there for all the email address harvesting bots to come by and pick up, and it has built in security. Plus a contact form built into the site makes it easier for people to email you.
9. Yet Another Related Posts Plugin – This is a pretty impressive plugin that can crawl your post titles, content and tags and provide a list of related topics (if any) below each post. It can help people find other posts that are not otherwise easily found.
10. wp-cache – I’ve just installed this plugin, but I don’t need it just yet. If a post ever ends up on slashdot or digg, it will help to keep the site up. I hope. If you’re using shared hosting, there may be issues with symbolic links.