Standard Plugins:

• WordPress Database Backup

by Austin Matzko

No matter what kind of blog you have, you will definitely need this plugin! It will help you backup your blog so you are always on the safe side if something should ever happen to your blog (which I hope will never occur of course).

I set it up to create daily backups that go straight to the trash of my gmail account (you can do this by going to settings and creating a filter). If I ever need it, I just go there and download the latest version.

• WP Super Cache

by Donncha O Caoimh

WP Super Cache is a static caching plugin for WordPress.  What does that mean? Well, by using this plugin you will speed up your WordPress blog significantly. The faster, the better. Your readers will like it and Google will like it too!

• FD Feedburner Plugin

by John Watson

If you have a FeedBurner account (and you should!), this plugin will help you make sure that all your subscribers get redirected to your Feedburner feed and therefore will appear in your stats.

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Search Engine Optimization:

• All in One SEO Pack

by Michael Torbert

Out-of-the-box SEO for your WordPress blog. If you ever googled your own blog, you will know that the listing consits of the title, two lines of text and your url (web address). This plugin makes it easier for you to control what exactly will be shown.

• Google XML Sitemaps

by Arne Brachhold

A sitemap is a list of pages of a web site accessible to search engine crawlers or users. This plugin will generate a special XML sitemap which will help search engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing and Ask.com to better index your blog.

• SEO FriendlyImages

by Vladimir Prelovac

As creative entrepreneurs, most of you will have lots of visuals on your blogs. This plugin automatically adds alt and title attributes to all your images which helps to improve traffic from search results, especially from Google images.

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Comments:

• CommentLuv

by Andy Bailey

Plugin to show a link to the last post from the commenters blog (if they have one) when they leave a comment. Rewards your readers and encourages more comments.

• Subscribe to Comments

by Mark Jaquith

When someone comments on one of your posts, they are usually  interested in your reply or other comments on that same post. This plugin allows readers to receive notifications of new comments that are posted to an entry through email.

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Engaging Readers:

• Social Homes

by Elie Zananiri

Adds a sidebar widget containing a subtle list of all your social homes as linked favicons (see my sidebar). Current services include anything and everything! Just add the full URL to the list of services and Social Homes will figure out what the icon is automatically.

• LinkWithin

by linkwithin.com

LinkWithin is a blog widget that appears under each post, linking to related stories from your blog archive. The widget links to stories that are relevant and interesting to readers of a particular post, keeping them engaged with your blog, and increasing your traffic. It is minimally styled and blends in with your site design (see example below this post)

• Sexy Bookmarks

by Josh Jones, Jamie Carter, Gautum Gupta, Norman Yung

SexyBookmarks adds a list of social bookmarking icons to each of your posts so your readers can share tese posts on their favorite social networks.

• Post Footer Library

by Atlantic Dominion Solutions

This plugin allows you to create a library of code snippets and easily include them at the bottom of Blog Posts on your WordPress powered blog. Add any text or even html. You can use it to remind your readers to subscribe to your blog or to follow you on Twitter or whatever else you wan them to do

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Visuals:

• Shadowbox JS

by Matt Martz

A blog only allows for a certain width of an image due to it’s design. To allow people to view your images in a bigger version, they could click through to the original file. Shadowbox offers a more elegant solution. Clicking on the image will now darken your screen and overlay it with your image. Don’t know what I’m talking about?  See an example.

Installation of  these listed plugins is included in the Creative Web Biz Kit for Artists and Other Creative Entrepreneurs, along with a self-hosted wordpress blog set-up, 10 preinstalled themes and a free ecourse!

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Want more?

Find more plugins by opening the “plugin” drop down menu in the left sidebar of your WordPress dashboard. Select “Add New” and start searching by keyword, author or tag.

Your Turn:

what are your favorite  plugins?

Leave a link to your blog so we can see them in action!

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