25 Top WordPress Plugins You Should Know About

Clean and simple list of the plugins I use most often on my WordPress sites:

1. Google XML Sitemap Generator* — auto generates XML sitemap for your Google Webmaster Account: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/google-sitemap-generator/
2. All in One SEO Pack* — allows easy and full control over title and meta description and keywords for each page and post: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/all-in-one-seo-pack/
3. NextGen Gallery — organize and upload photos to your blog and display using thumbnails, image browser, or slideshow: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/nextgen-gallery/
4. Cforms — create a variety of web forms using this robust and easy-to-configure form plugin: http://www.deliciousdays.com/cforms-plugin
5. Google Analyticator* – provides great analytics and has dashboard stats: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/google-analyticator/
6. Sharing: Add to Any — Automatically puts a sharing link on every post and page: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/add-to-any/ OR Sexy Bookmarks — http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/sexybookmarks/
7. WP Super Cache* — creates html pages of site and stores on server to speed up load time of site content: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-super-cache/
8. Akismet — filters spam comments from your blog. Must have wordpress.com user account to get Akismet key: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/akismet/
9. FD Feedburner — routes your blog feed subscriptions through Google Feedburner. Allows users to subscribe to feed via email and provides stats tracking: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/feedburner-plugin/
10. Viper’s Video Quicktags — Button in toolbar of editor allows you to quickly and easily embed videos in your blog posts from a variety of video portals including YouTube:
    http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/vipers-video-quicktags/
11. Page Navigation — creates numbered list at bottom of index and category pages to allow people to better navigation through numerous posts: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-pagenavi/
12. Blubrry PowerPress Podcasting — PowerPress offers full iTunes support, the Update iTunes Listing feature, web audio/video media players and more:
    http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/powerpress/
13. Dagon Sitemap Generator — generates a customized sitemap for visitors to the site. He does not appear to be keeping the plugin up to date on wordpress.org, so get it directly from his site: http://www.dagondesign.com/articles/sitemap-generator-plugin-for-wordpress/
14. Limit Login Attempts — Use http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/login-lockdown/ OR http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/limit-login-attempts/
15. Firewall — blocks unusual request to the DB:http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wordpress-firewall/
16. WP DB Backup* — makes it easy to create a backup of the entire database or repair your database without having to login to your PHP MyAdmin to do so: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-db-backup/
17. Flexi-pages — robust options for managing which pages show up in the sidebar, including hierarchical control, such as just show child pages: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/flexi-pages-widget/
18. Category Posts — Shows posts within a certain category in the sidebar: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/category-posts/
19. Extended Categories — great widgets for determining which categories display in the sidebar and how: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/extended-categories-widget/
20. Broken Link Checker* — checks for broken links throughout your site: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/broken-link-checker/
21. My Page Order — very handy interface for easily ordering pages: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/my-page-order/ (also check out My Link Order for ordering your links)
22. Twitter: Twitter Tools — automatically generate tweets from your posts http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/twitter-tools/; Twitter Widget Pro — Great Twitter widget with customizable CSS. I like this widget better than the widget that comes with Twitter Tools because of the way it looks:  http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/twitter-widget-pro/
23. Exclude Pages* — so helpful for excluding certain pages from navigation (such as privacy policy and sitemap) without having to edit the template file: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/exclude-pages/
24. Tiny MCE Advanced Editor — advanced toolbar for the TinyMCE editor: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/tinymce-advanced/
25. Custom Field Template — adds the default custom fields on the Write Post/Page with a gui interface: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/custom-field-template/

* These are “must-have” plugins for every WordPress install for SEO and practical purposes