Akismet is the wonderful plugin that fights the evils of spam! It’s a plugin that comes with WordPress and it works very well indeed! Use this plugin and you won’t need to crawl through lists of spam comments looking for the genuine ones. Akismet is so good you won’t even need a captcha your comment form. Link: Akismet.

All in One SEO Pack

Stop worrying about your SEO and concentrate on writing awesome content! This plugin manages all of the SEO details that your blog needs; giving you so much more free time! Link: All in One SEO Pack.

Google Analytics For WordPress

Sure, adding Google Analytics on to your WordPress blog is easy, but this plugin lets you take advantage of its full power! Use it to track just about everything that’s going on with your blog! Link: Google Analytics For WordPress.

Yet Another Related Posts Plugin

Do you think that linking articles is pointless? You’re very wrong indeed! Linking to another article within articles is a great way to allow uses to find related posts, improve your page rank and keep users on your site for longer. This plugin uses keywords to create links between articles. Link: Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Thank Me Later

I love this plugin. It emails first-time commentators with a message of your choice. Remind users of new posts or invite them to connect with you. Link: Thank Me Later.

Insights

Want to insert an image into your post? Tired of opening a new tab, searching for an image, copying the URL and inserting it into the image field? Insights will allow you to create posts much faster by enabling you to search your blog for previous posts, search and insert Flickr/Google images, insert videos from Youtube, link to Wikipedia articles, search Google and add a map from Google Maps. Link: Insights.

Tweetable

This plugin is magic! It allows you to host your own TwitPic-esque gallery on your blog. Everytime you post a photo on twitter, users are directed to your site and not somewhere like TwitPic.com. Works great combined with an iPhone and Twittelator. Link: Tweetable.

Google Syntax Highlighter for Wordpress

Want to include source code to your posts, but don’t like the lack of syntax highlighting? Then this plugin is for you. Write or paste your code and let it know what language you are using. Simple as that! Link: Google Syntax Highlighter for WordPress.

WP Super Cache

This plugin is a must. It makes your pages load several times faster and takes a huge load off of your server too! Link: WP Super Cache.

Contact Form 7

Allow your users to contact you with simplicity and ease. Easy to customise, even if you have no programming knowledge. Great at stopping spambots getting hold of your email address too! Link: Contact Form 7.

Conclusion

There you have it – A list of my ten favourite WordPress plugins that I couldn’t run a blog without! These plugins can increase productivity, performance and do lots of other impressive magic tricks. Give them a go on your blog and let me know what you think. Or leave a comment sharing the WordPress plugins that you couldn’t live without!

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