Standard Plugins
These are the plugins I believe every blog should have and I include with every WordPress installation I perform. On occasion, substitutions will have to be made due to plugin incompatibility or a new release of WordPress necessitates a change.
- Akismet (comes with WordPress anyway) — helps reduce spam posts on your blog
- Dagon Design Form Mailer — contact form management
- Google Sitemap Generator — helps improve SEO
- FeedBurner FeedSmith — Improved RSS feed management
- MaxBlogPress Ping Optimizer — improves traffic
These plugins are highly recommended, but are not always needed. It all depends on the purpose of your website.
- AddThis Social Widget — Adds a social bookmarking link to every blog post
- Search Pages — Needed if you will have relevant information on pages that you want visitors to easily find
- What Would Seth Godin Do? — Adds a quick note to your blog that shows up when someone visits for the first time
- Dagon Design List Sub Pages — Makes it easy to navigate, without have to show sub pages in the main navigation
- Dagon Design Sitemap Generator — Creates a pages that maps the content of your website. Very visitor friendly!
- Search Suggest — Actually suggests other searches when a visitor’s search turns up nothing!
- Max Blogpress Favicon (included in the Greta Garbo & Ingrid Bergman packages) — creates that professional looking icon next to the URL in the browser window
