WordPress plugins

kwikbreaks

I'd seen WordPress recommended on here a few times so when I decided to give one of my sites a face lift I decided to convert it from hand coded html/php to WordPress. I was so impressed with the simplicity of WordPress that I've even started to knock up another site based on it.

I had to find some plugins to make my conversion easier and currently I'm using

Akismet
Allow PHP in posts and pages
Simple Google Sitemap XML
WordPress Backup to Dropbox
WP-Optimize

As there are hundreds if not thousands of plugins I thought I'd ask here just which ones you folks consider to be must-haves and why.

BTW I'm using the Suffusion theme as I like simplicity in appearance too.

facelikebambi

All in One SEO Pack has proved quite handy for me in the past, for improving Google ranking etc.

topherknowles

Contact Form 7 - Simple yet flexible way to get contact forms onto your sites easily

W3 Total Cache - Great for improving the speed of your sites via caching and minimising (doubled the response time of one of mine!)

Astuteboy

One of "WordPress SEO by Yoast" or "All in One SEO Pack" is a must. Yoast's is probably the better of the two.

"WP Touch" is really quite impressive for a free plugin, so your site can be viewed properly on mobile devices.

One of the social bookmarking plugins is useful to have to help people share your content; "Shareaholic" and "Socialable" are two good ones although they both seem to have been pulled from the Wordpress plugin directory for some reason (they're probably still available elsewhere).

kwikbreaks

Thanks for the ideas - I'll take a look at them for sure.

Meanwhile I'm considering converting another site - I've become addicted to WordPress much to the disgust of my son who reckons there are plenty of CMS which do a much better job (he likes Drupal). I don't doubt they do but WordPress is just so simple...

facelikebambi

Admittedly, I'm more of a Drupal fan too. It's more flexible than Wordpress but has a steeper learning curve. Both great free platforms though