When i started blogging one year ago, i dint really know the power of wordpress. I only had a few plugins installed. And then over a period of time, i came to know about other plugins and realised the power of Wordpress actually lies in the plugins we can use with it. But i learnt that after some good time of experimentation and expirience.

So here i am with a new blog and setup-ing the new blog is a time consuming job (its not difficult with Fantastico or Wordpress’s own 5 minutes install,but it is time consuming given that you have to select themes and plugins and all). So i had to make a list of plugins which you need when you start afresh with a new blog. These are just the bare-minimum you need. Ofcourse, you still can need others depending upon the nature and target of your blog.

Here they are (in no particular order):

1. Akismet:

You cant have a blog without Akismet, can you? Akismet is the most famous “spam assassin ” used today. Its a must have because if you dont have it, you will be more busy deleting those viagra,cialis and enhacement pills spam comments than creating some good content for your blog. (You need a Wordpress API key for this to work, which can be obtained from your Wordpress.com account).This was obvious,wasnt it?

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2. All In One SEO Pack:

One of the more important things you worry about your blog is SEO or Search Engine Optimization. SEO is optimizing you web page such that it is easily understood by the web crawlers of search engines like Google, Yahoo, LIVE search etc.

All In One SEO Pack takes care of all that with easy. You just have to enter your description, META keywords etc and it wioll do the rest. Saves you some time you would otherwise put in editing your wordpress files.

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3. Adman:

Adman lets you place you Adsense in between your posts without disturbing your page layout. That is something you can not do normally,you could edit your files to place ads at the top or bottom of the post or in the sidebar. Placing ads wisely can increase your revenue. (You should have a Google Adsense account).

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4. Add to Any:

Add to Any lets your visitor to share your blog/post on social bookmarking sites like Digg, StumbleUpon,Technorati,Del.icio.us etc. User can chose from a vast list of social bookmarking sites.

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5. cForms:

cForms lets you create professional looking, highly customizable contact form for your blog so that your readers can contact you if  and when they want.

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6. Feedburner FeedSmith:

Number of subscribers is a general ground of estimating a blogs popularity. But when your readers subscribe to your feeds using wordpress’s original feeds, you cant keep a track on their number which results in mis-calculation of the worth of your blog. Feedburner FeedSmith plugin redirects all your feed subscribers to your Feedburner feeds so that you do not miss any subscriber to your blog. (You need a Feedburner account first)

7. Google XML Sitemaps:

Google XML Sitemaps, as the name suggests is a sitemap generator. It generates a fully complaint sitemap for your blog. Sitemap is a very important aspect for efficient indexing of your site by crawlers of Google,Yahoo,MSN,Ask along with SEO basics.

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8. Ultimate Google Analytics:

Lets you track the visitors on your site. You should have a Google Analytics account before you can use this.

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9. What Would Seth Godin Do:

WWSGD adds a small welcome message,before or after your post to your visitors. You could use this to suggest new visitors to subscribe to your RSS feeds. It differentiates between new and returning visitors using cookies and serves them a different message.

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10. WP Tweaks:

A very helpful plugin that lets you add a few tweaks to your wordpress.

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11. WP-Cache:

Wp Cache is a powerful caching option for your blog. It creates static files of your pages and thereby cuts the time taken to load by your blog dramatically as .php files are not compiled everytime, hence saving server resources.

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Similar useful plugin is WP Wigdet Cache

It caches only the output ofyour widget’s queries and not the whole page. Still,it saves you some time and server resources bu cutting down the query number.

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