Here's a couple extremely popular WordPress plugins that are so core to my use of WP, that I think they should be a WP standard feature. If you are new to WordPress and have recently installed it, here are the plugins that you should add right off the bat. I'm writing this article becuase when I first switched to WordPress, I had no idea how powerful the plugins were in augmenting WP. And the great thing is, they are so simple to install. It really is easy to get addicted to just trying them out.
Akismet is the number one most popular WP plugin. Akismet is a powerful spam identification and blocking web service which can be incorporated into WP with this must have plugin. Usually Akismet's free API keys should be enough to block most spam.
All in One SEO makes search engine optimization less of an intricate skill by laying it all out for you. What it does is that it basically asks you to produce the description and keywords found inside ordinary meta tags but also gives each of your posts/pages which are WP created a unique title, something that is hard to do using PHP Includes. It's most effective if you regard WP as your site's CMS (content management system) rather than a blogging platform where the index blog page is WP run but the rest of your site's content is built off handcoded .php or .html files.
Simple Social - Sharing Widgets & Icons adds a nondescript (which in this case is good) line of social networking/sharing options at the bottom of each blog post.
WordPress Thread Comment allows the comments to be threaded so that a commenter can reply to a previously posted comment directly beneath that comment meaning more interaction.
WP Maintenance Mode is just a simple, useful plugin that adds a splash page to your blog whenever you're up to something behind the scenes. This sort of simple thing is impossible to do gracefully otherwise.
WP-PageNavi shows that although all in all, I have very few complaints about the standard WordPress package, there is one glaring one. Its lack of decent pagination for your blog; it comes with only two options for navigating your blog timeline- Previous Post, Next Post. WP-PageNavi provides a much needed pagination system.
WPTouch allows your site to be accessed more easily by mobiles by providing a mobile theme when viewed by handheld devices.
There are thousands upon thousands of different plugins providing for almost any need making WordPress the most easily customized content management system out there. There are multiple plugins for Re-Tweeting posts and Facebook Liking posts and many more plugins for sharing posts across multiple social sharing networks. Dozens more help widgetize your WP sidebar letting you create Tag Clouds, Most Popular, and Most Recent boxes.
My final advice is that, if you need anything. Just search it up. A translation, a slide-out navigation system, a polling booth, a way to implement Youtube videos nicely, a content slider, a custom 404 page. Just ask it and make sure to make WP your full-time CMS.
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