Wordpress offers a great blogging experience. One of the best things about Wordpress is the plugins. Plugins allow you to extend the blog platform. And these plugins are authored by the Wordpress community. And, guess what – they are free! Well, probably 99% of them. Anyway, here are some great plugins that I use regularly.


Spam Karma – Hands down one of the best plugins for Wordpress. One of the first things you will notice about Wordpress is comment spam. Comment spam racks up quickly. And this little plugin packs a wallop on that nasty stuff.

FireStats – A nice stats plugin that gives you a bird’s eye view of what’s going on for your blog. You need to know how people to your blog, where they go, and how they exit. This is a nice way for you to see that information right in your blog.

Sitemaps – If you don’t know the value of sitemaps, you need to look into it. This dandy of a plugin generates a sitemap for you and then pings search engines for you. Very, very nice plugin.

ShareThis – Again, if you don’t know the value of social network, boy – have you got some learning to do! But, don’t fret, it’s all good for your blog. This gem gives your users an easy way to submit your content to those social network.

Subscribe to Comments – A great way to keep people coming back to your blog is through comments. An even better way to keep them coming back is to enable way to subscribe to them. Now they can get an email notification when someone else comments.

Secure Form Mailer – Ever need a secure, easy way for folks to contact you? How about an easy to customize form? Dagon has created a plugin that does both. It’s super easy to use and very powerful. Did I mention that it will email you the results of the form – mmmm good.

Adsense Deluxe – So, you want to put ads on your blog?  Well, let me point you to this great plugin.  It will give you an easy way to insert Google Adsense, Yahoo Ads, etc. into your blog posts, sidebars, etc.

Related Entries – Wow, yet another wonderful plugin.  You want to keep your readers on your blog as long as possible.  This plugin offers up related posts to your readers.  They came there for a reason – give some others that may interest them.

Oh, I have more up my sleeve, but they can wait.  This should get you off to a nice blog experience.