Thirteen of My Favorite WordPress Plugins

I just wanted to post a quick list of WordPress plugins that I find very useful. It can be a bit intimidating choosing a plugin for your specific task. So I have put together a list of my favorites and a quick note about their function.  Some plugins you will find dont work with others due to conflicting scripts. But these listed below all work flawlessly together!

These are not posted in order of favorites. But just posted Alphabetically.

1. Akismet- This site is free for personal use and has saved me from so much headache. I no longer have to sort through comments to determine which have been left by a spammer or a loyal reader. It sends suspicious comments to a que to be dealt with later. In my experience all comments Akismet has caught has been 100% spam!
2. All in One SEO pack- This creates a box at the end of my post that I can enter relevant key words for my post for the bots to read. This really helps my post hit the net in the manner it was intended.
3. Comment Luv-This is a plug in I do especially love. It allows you to offer a link back to your reader through their comment and also scope out their site easily in return!
4. Contact Commenters- This is such a great resource! This allows you to send a message to all commenter’s on a certain post, see which reader has posted the most comments in a specific period of time and more!
5. Fast and Secure Contact Form- An easy contact me form. You can adjust settings easily and just copy a bit of script into the page you want it to pop up on.  Your email isn’t visible for the spam bots and readers can easily send you a message!
6. Featured Content Gallery- A super simple post slideshow you can add to your blog template that will show users featured posts and pictures that you have chosen!
7. FT Signature Manager- Easily add a custom signature to all of your blog posts effortlessly. You can set it to pop up automatically or turn it off on certain posts where it is not needed! It allows html as well so your signature can contain an image!
8. Link Within-This creates post thumbnails at the bottom of every post with other related or similar  posts. I love that it creates a picture for readers to click on. Easier to notice than missing a tag line containing a link for example
9. Shadow Box JS- This shadow box is very similar to a light box. But when I have tried to use lightboxes it disables over java functions on my site. This one allows my pictures to pop up in the middle of my page error free.
10. Twitter Goodies- I have tried a few different Twitter Widgets for WordPress and this one is my favorite. It looks very nice and clean as well as it is very easy to adjust the settings from your dashboard.
11. Video Sidebar Widgets- I love this because you can add up to 6 you tube videos and they will randomly change on your side as people land on your page. Great way to keep the content fresh for your users as well as give more you tube videos some love!
12. Vistor Maps and Whos Online- Love this! You can see who is on your blog at anytime. You can also see what brought them there! There is also an option to view bots too. So you can see for example which blog page google is currently indexing!
13. WordPress Gravatars- You can use this to create a custom gravatar for your site. So if your reader doesnt have one it will display one of your choosing instead of the blank ones that are default!

I hope you found this information useful! There are definitely alot more plug in options that I probably don’t know. But theses I have had alot of success with!