WordPress, in my opinion, is the best blogging software out there. It’s extremely easy to set-up, to use, and there are a ton of useful plugins out there that extend it’s functionality even more. When your just starting out, it can be confusing to know which plugins to start with.

Here are my list of essential plugins that should be used by all bloggers:

  1. Feedburner Feed Replacement - Forwards all your feed traffic to Feedburner.com so you can make use of their features for feed presentation and subscriber analysis.
  2. WPCandy - Allows you to insert elements into your blog without having to edit your templates. Great for inserting AdSense code, and hooks for Google Analytics or SiteMeter.
  3. Google Sitemaps Generator - Generates a XML-Sitemap compliant sitemap of your WordPress blog. This format is supported by Ask.com, Google, YAHOO and MSN Search
  4. TinyMCE Advanced - Adds 16 plugins to WordPress’ wysiwyg editor. Supports fullscreen mode, adding and editing basic tables and search and replace in the editor!
  5. AdSense-Deluxe - Allows for simple insertion of Google AdSense or Yahoo Publisher Network ads into your WordPress posts.
  6. WordPress Database Backup - Creates a backup of your WordPress Database. The backup can be emailed to you or downloaded directly.
  7. ImageManager - Allows for browsing and uploading of image files onto your WordPress site. Also allow simple image editing such as crop, rotate, flip, and scale.
  8. Google Analytics and Feedburner Reports - View reports from Google Analytics and Feedburner in your WordPress administration area.
  9. Subscribe to Comments - Give your readers the option to receive email notification of further comments.
  10. SimpleTags - Allows you to easily generate Technorati tags at the bottom of your blog entries.

This is a just a small sample of the plugins out there, but are considered the best by a large number of WordPress users. If you know of a plugin that should be listed, leave a comment.

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