Not available in stores...the WordPress Plugin Bar

It’s Web Design Wednesdays, and this week I’m going to focus on WordPress.

I’ve been using WordPress for a few months now, and I’ve pretty much settled on a few plugins that I love and which will be on my “default install” for any other sites I make.  There are a couple of plugins on this list that I’m not currently using, but I have them earmarked for other sites.

There are two specific examples; I’m not posting comics here, so there’s not much sense for the ComicPress plugin.  I’m not selling stuff, so there’s not much sense in having the WP eCommerce plugin installed, but they’re both really cool plugins that I’ve played with.

Askimet – Spam service, so far I’ve gone from several dozen spam a day to 0. That’s a pretty big improvement.  This is a default plugin, but I can’t believe how many people don’t use it.
All in One SEO Pack – Radical Hive is already the #1 result when you enter Brian Garside on Google, and was just a few days after I added this pack.  This also allows me to target specific posts and pages to keywords.
Democracy – Easy to use polls.  Also has an easy to use Widget which you can place in your sidebar
flickrRSS – Photos from my Flickr account right to my sidebar
Google XML Sitemaps – This adds a sitemaps.org accessible XML sitemap to your site which makes Google trawling that much better.
Twitter for WordPress – Another sidebar plugin, shows the most recent 5 posts from my Twitter account.
WordPress Automatic Upgrade – I never have to open my FTP program to get the most recent WordPress, and that is the biggest barrier to entry to getting this done.
WordPress Database Backup – Again, no need to open anything other than my dashboard to back up my site.  Good stuff.
WP Google Analytics – A really simple way of getting your Analytics account into WordPress, also allows for customization such as not counting Admin visitors as visitors (meaning that I don’t get counted when I visit my own site).
WP e-Commerce – It’s a decent little shopping package, makes a Word Press blog into something that you can sell stuff on.

Honourable Mention:
The ComicPress theme / plugin – I’ll be using this when I eventually relaunch Chronicology as a web comic.  Some day, really.  Honestly even.
WP Super Cache – A really easy way of speeding your website up.  Turns database delivered files into flat files and improves performance greatly.