Okay .. maybe “sexy” is a little overdoing it – but, I’ve been blogging since May 2005 and have many blogs and I like to think that I have some experience in selecting the right wordpress plugins for my blogs. Plugins are like the backbbone of your blog, and just like your theme .. determines the functionality and look of your blog. I thought I would share all of the major plugins that I am using around my network of sites.

Here’s how I keep track of all my plugins .. On my local hard drive, I have a folder something like this:
c:\2009-Latest-Wordpress

Whenever I find a plugin I like, I copy it into a folder such as this:
c:\2009-Latest-Wordpress\plugins\

If there are specific plugins – e.g. – my translator plugin configured for the PetLvr blog only .. I would do something like this:
c:\2009-Latest-Wordpress\special\petlvr\plugins\

How To Install WordPress Plugins

If you see something you like, I have linked the name of the wordpress plugin to its author page. Although, I recommend that you try to obtain it through the WordPress Plugin Directory or better yet .. scroll down to the bottom of your PLUGINS page in your dashboard, and use the built-in Plugin Browser/Installer functionality link … you just type the name of the plugin into the search field, and install. This way .. when plugins are outdated or, there is a new version available – you will know because in wordpress, there will be a message below the plugin to warn you. It is very possible that plugins are not updated by the author on major development versions, and if the plugin is private, paid or not in the WordPress Plugin Directory, you many never know if your plugin is out of date or not.

Here They Are – In Alphabetical Order

* AccessQontrol – To make your site private, or not…

* Akismet – Akismet checks your comments against the Akismet web service to see if they look like spam or not. You need a WordPress.com API key to use it.

* All in One SEO Pack – Out-of-the-box SEO for your WordPress blog.

* Angsuman’s Translator Plugin Gold – This is NOT a FREE plugin. Translator Plugin Gold translates your blog dynamically to forty-one additional languages – German, Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese, Japanese, Korean, Chinese Simplified, Chinese Traditional, Arabic, Dutch, Greek, Russian, Norwegian, Brazilian Portuguese, Bulgarian, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Finnish, Hungarian, Icelandic, Latin American Spanish, Filipino, Polish, Romanian, Serbian, Slovenian, Swedish, Welsh, Turkish, Latin. Catalan, Hebrew, Hindi, Indonesian, Latvian, Lithunian, Slovak, Ukranian, Vietnamese. We support blogs written in forty-two different languages – (English, German, Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese, Japanese, Korean, Chinese Simplified, Chinese Traditional, Arabic, Dutch, Greek, Russian, Norwegian, Brazilian Portuguese, Bulgarian, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Finnish, Hungarian, Icelandic, Latin American Spanish, Filipino, Polish, Romanian, Serbian, Slovenian, Swedish, Welsh, Turkish, Latin. Catalan, Hebrew, Hindi, Indonesian, Latvian, Lithunian, Slovak, Ukranian, Vietnamese) as the base language of the blog. This is an extremely versatile and easy to use tool to instantly increase your pages by a factor of forty-one, all SEO optimized, to make your blog accessible to a much wider audience. The translated pages can be bookmarked for future use.

* Audio player – Highly configurable single track mp3 player.

* Auto-hyperlink URLs – Auto-hyperlink text URLs in post content and comment text to the URL they reference. Does NOT try to hyperlink already hyperlinked URLs. Improves WordPress’s default make_clickable function, along with adding some configuration options.

* Auto Social Poster Gold (aff) – Increasing Your Blog’s Traffic and Authority .. Download a selection of WordPress plugins!

* Bad Behavior – Deny automated spambots access to your PHP-based Web site.

* Clean Archives Reloaded – A slick, Javascript-enhanced post archive list generator for WordPress 2.5+

* Contact Form 7 – Just another contact form plugin. Simple but flexible.

* CommentLuv – Plugin to show a link to the last post from the commenters blog by parsing the feed at their given URL when they leave a comment. Rewards your readers and encourage more comments.

* CyStat – Statistik-Plugin

* Datafeedr (aff) – This is NOT a FREE plugin. You can only get this plugin from Datafeedr.com as part of a Datafeedr.com membership. Never Before Has It Been This Simple To Build Your Own WordPress Affiliate Datafeed Store!

* Datafeedr Random Ads Plugin – The Datafeedr Random Ads plugin is a free plugin which allows you to simply and easily show random ads anywhere in your template files or using widgets.

* Evermore – Abbreviate all posts when viewed on multiple post pages. This makes all posts behave as if there is a “< !–more–>” at an appropriate spot inside the content.

* Exec-PHP – Executes < ?php ?> code in your posts, pages and text widgets.

* Featured Content Gallery – Used to create a customizable rotating image gallery anywhere within your WordPress site.

* FeedBurner FeedSmith – Originally authored by Steve Smith, this plugin detects all ways to access your original WordPress feeds and redirects them to your FeedBurner feed so you can track every possible subscriber. By FeedBurner.

* Full Text Feed – Prevents WordPress 2.1+ from adding a more link to your website’s feed.

* Get Recent Comments – Display the most recent comments or trackbacks with your own formatting in the sidebar.

* Google XML Sitemaps – This plugin will generate a sitemaps.org compatible sitemap of your WordPress blog which is supported by Ask.com, Google, MSN Search and YAHOO.

* Insights – Insights allows you to quickly search and insert information (links, images, videos, maps, news..) into your blog posts.

* Lucia’sLinkLove – Where a commenter has commented at least some number of timeslinks are made “dofollow”. User interface permits blogger to do follow author link or links inside comments.

* OIOpublisher Direct 2.0 (aff) – Control your Ad Space with OIOpublisher.

* phpBay Pro Plugin for WordPress (aff) – This is NOT a FREE plugin. Add eBay auction listings to your WordPress posts.

* Random Redirect – Allows you to create a link to yourblog.example.com/?random which will redirect someone to a random post on your blog, in a StumbleUpon-like fashion.

* Secure and Accessible PHP Contact Form – This powerful yet easy-to-install contact form features exceptional accessibility and usability while still providing extensive anti-spam and anti-exploit security features. A marriage of communication and peace-of-mind.

* Sensitive Tag Cloud – This wordpress plugin provides a highly configurable tagcloud that shows tags depending of the current context.

* Simple Forum – Simple:Press is a feature rich forum plugin for WordPress. It fully integrates into your WP based site utilising the same user records and database and displaying on a single WP page. It is fully customisable and comes with a number of skins and sets of icons to get your started. Current users have shown it to be fully scaleable whether your site membership numbers the tens or the thousands.

* StatPress – Real time stats for your blog

* Supr by StumbleUpon – Su.pr is the only URL shortener that gets you more traffic and save time posting to Twitter, Facebook and StumbleUpon.

* Theme Test Drive – Safely test drive any theme while visitors are using the default one. Includes instant theme preview via thumbnail.

* Tweet This – Adds a “Tweet This Post” link to every post and page. Shortens URLs in advance through Th8.us, eating up only 19 of 140 characters.

* Visual Recent Posts – Visually represents your most recent posts by extracting the first image from each post and displaying it along with the post title and excerpt.

* Where did they go from here – Show “Readers who viewed this page, also viewed” links on your page. Much like Amazon.com’s product pages.

* Whydowork Adsense – Insert Adsense code in your pages without modifying the template. Show different ads for articles older than 7 days (or as old as you wish).

* WordPress Database Backup – On-demand backup of your WordPress database.

* WordPress Video Plugin – (for wpMU) – A filter for WordPress that displays videos from myvideo.de, youtube, google video, Brightcove, Aniboom, 123video.nl, MyspaceTV, Yahoo! Video, Veoh, Wandeo, Glumbert, Gametrailers, Gamevideos, LiveLeak, sevenload.de, clipfish.de, break.com, Metacafe, dailymotion.com, Vimeo, videotube, blip.tv, revver, IFILM, Tu.tv, grouper, Cellfish.com, Sumo.tv, Last.fm, Vsocial, teachertube, SlideShare, Jumpcut, MSN, GoalVideoz, Guba, wat.tv, Smotri.Com..and many more.

* WP Admin Bar Reloaded – Adds a small admin bar to the top of every page.

* WP-Cumulus – Flash based Tag Cloud for WordPress

* WP to Twitter – Updates Twitter when you create a new blog post or add to your blogroll using Cli.gs. With a Cli.gs API key, creates a clig in your Cli.gs account with the name of your post as the title.

* WP-PostRatings – Adds an AJAX rating system for your WordPress blog’s post/page.

* WP-Print – Displays a printable version of your WordPress blog’s post/page.

* WP-RSSImport – Import and display Feeds in your blog.

* WP-SpamFree – An extremely powerful anti-spam plugin that virtually eliminates comment spam. Finally, you can enjoy a spam-free WordPress blog! Includes spam-free contact form feature as well.

* WP Super Cache – Very fast caching plugin for WordPress.

Hope you enjoyed this list. If you have any useful wordpress plugins activated in your blog – feel free to list it below in the comments, with a brief description what its purpose is, and how you think it helps with the running of your blog!

Thank-You. // HART