What are the best plugins for your blog?
Answer: It depends. Yes, that’s my initial response to many questions about blogging, but it’s not because I’m attempting to be coy or evasive. It’s my answer because it’s true. The best plugins (added features for your blog) will vary from blog to blog depending on the purpose of the blog, the goals of the blogger, and the other tools they have at their disposal.
Plugins I recommend for business bloggers
- FeedBurner FeedSmith (formerly Feed Replacement) — FeedBurner (FB) has many free features that you’ll want to take advantage of. Some of these tools are even used outside your blog. For instance, in my email signature I use FB to show rotating headlines from my latest blog posts. I also send blog posts via email thanks to FB.
- Subscribe to Comments — Allows site visitors to subscribe to comments to a post (Handy for when folks post a question and want to know when you’ve posted an answer.)
- Angusman’s Feed Copyrighter — Places a message at the end of your feed saying your content is copyrighted. Most of my readers are feed readers (versus those of you reading this on my blog itself), so it’s important to me to have certain plugins that work specifically with my feed.
- WordPress Database Backup — Keeps your data safe. Also allows for your backups to be done automatically at regular intervals so it becomes one less task on your “to do” list.
- Subscribe Remind — At the beginning or end of each post, this plugin adds text that reminds your readers that they can subscribe to your blog’s feed. Helps with retention of first time visitors/readers.
- Secure and Accessible PHP Contact Form — Allows people to contact you without leaving you vulnerable to spam floods. There are several colors/styles of forms to choose from so you’ll likely find something that complements your theme.
- Contextual Related Posts — Shows “related posts” to highlight relevant content for your readers. Helps them discover previous posts without searching through your archives.
- No Self Pings — When you reference your own posts, you don’t ping yourself (basically showing your excerpt as a trackback).
- LinkLove — “Thank” your regular commenters with this plugin that removes the “nofollow” attribute allowing search engine spiders to follow the link they leave when the comment. I like this plugin because you can specify how many comments earn someone the designation as a “regular commenter.”
- Viper’s Video Quicktags — If you use video on your site, this plugin makes it easy to add the links as you’re composing your post.
Other’s “plug” their top blog plugins
- David Airey shares his Top 5 essential WordPress Plugins, reminding us of why we use plugins in the first place, to “improve user-friendliness and functionality.”
- Lorelle VanFossen offers an extensive list of plugins for images, photographs, and graphics. Chances are if an image-related plugin exists, it’s on this page.
- Arpit Jacob offers up a list of plugins, most of which focus on back-end issues so they’re helpful to the blogger. I look forward to checking out WP Plugins Tracker and WordPress Automatic Upgrade Plugin.
- Vlad Akilov posted a thorough list of WordPress Plugins that run the gamut from fun to functional.
You’re welcome to vote for your favorite plugin or share one that’s not listed here. Of course you could also have a little fun and add a comment about the plugin you’ve been dreaming of (some developer may just come along and create it for you). 
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2 comments. Thank you for sharing! »
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Hi Shonnie,
You’re right. Different blogs merit different Plugins, for sure. A personal or photography blog could use the Flickr Plugin to show photos, for example, whereas this is less useful on a business blog.
Thanks for piecing together your own recommendations. A couple in there that I’ve not seen before. Thanks also for the kind mention of my own article.
Comment by David Airey :: Graphic Designer — August 15, 2007 @ 3:44 pm
Keep writing great content and I’ll continue to feature it David.
Comment by Shonnie Lavender — August 16, 2007 @ 2:08 pm