Top 10 WordPress Plugins Any Blogger Should Use

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Wordpress is definitely the most powerful blogging platform available (and not for blogging only) and there is always a lot to learn in order to get the most out of your blog. New features, customization options, optimizations are all important ingredients for the recipe to make your blog better.

One of the most important role in this story is reserved to plugins. Plugins are little add-ons which add new functionalities to your blog and which can make the difference when it comes to evaluate your blog in terms of performances, look and feel and ease to use.

I think that sharing the plugins which are working better for a blogger using WordPress is very important for other bloggers looking forward to improving their blog. That said, here is the list of the top 10 plugins every blogger must have on their WP blog (IMHO).

1) Zemanta
Zemanta is a plugin which helps you populate your post with rich content, such as links, photos and tags. It analyzes your content and presents suggestions appropriate for your post. Very useful to enrich your blog post.

2) Insights
I love Insights. From a certain standpoint, it’s very similar to Zemanta, but it works manually. You can insert your search phrase and it quickly returns results from your own blog, Google, Google Images, the Web and so on. Then you can easily insert the content you need or quickly add hyperlinks.

3) SuperCache
The older your blog is, the more you risk to frustrate your readers with a very slow download. I was experiencing bad performances of mine, too, so I finally decided to install this plugin. It’s a new branch development from the popular WP-Cache, with several major improvements.

4) Tweetmeme
Tweetmeme is the “Techmeme” of Twitter. The more a post appears on twitter because of retweets, the higher position it has on Tweetmeme. Your readers can easily retweet your posts and see how many times it’s been retweeted by other users.

5) Contextual Related Content
Very easy but effective plugin, it adds the links to other related content on your blog.

6) WP GreetBox
I definitely love this plugin! It adds a different welcome box on top of your posts depending on where your readers are coming from (RSS, Google, Twitter, Technorati etc…) and it reminds them that they can easily subscribe to the RSS feed.

7) Wassup
I use to use Google Analytics (as you do, confess!), but I can say Wassup is definitely worth a try. It’s a very well done analytics with lots of information and customization options.

8) Broken Link Checker
After months or years since you write a certain blog post, some links which appear on it can change or, even worse, disappear, and that’s not good for your page rank. This plugin analyzes your posts and shows all the broken links, letting you easily fix them. Very useful.

9) Disqus
There are some very good alternatives to the standard WP comment section, but Disqus is the one I like better. The ability to reply by email or to login through Facebook connect are just two of the great features it makes available to your blog readers. Definitely the best one in this category.

10) PHP Code Widget
Wordpress text widgets are very useful since you can add HTML code on your sidebar, so it’s very easy to insert images and so on. This widget also adds the possibility to add PHP code together with HTML, something which gives you much more flexibility.

Ok, now I shared my favorite WordPress plugins. What about you? What are your favorite WP plugins? Leave a comment and let me know.

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Tagged as: Blog, Google, luca filigheddu, plugins, RSS, Technorati, top 10, Twitter, wordpress, Zemanta