I am really happy using Wordpress for blogging. Plugins are one of the killer feature helps to conquer the world. They really extend it into various, useful, sometimes unexpected ways 😃

There are tons of plugins available, so you can find almost whatever you want. I want to share my list of plugins used.

Akismet - plugin to reject spam comments. It is installed by default, but not activated, easy activation though. When gained some popularity I faced with spam comments. First it was like 1-2 per week and it quickly raised to 10 per day. Installing something like CAPTCHA can help but makes visitor nervous, uncomfortable and not happy!

All in One SEO Pack - SEO optimization. Allows to enter custom meta description, keywords, title for each page. Customize standard post title to include additional information. Build-in Google Analytics code, etc..

Simple Adsense - Inserting Adsense blocks into post content. Really simple, good to get started with AdSense. I am going to move to something more advanced soon.

Contact Form 7 - Nice contact form, sends information on email, see example on my about page

Google XML Sitemaps - Creates xml site map for quicker site indexing. Notifies Google and Bing of new posts and pages.

Header and Footer -  Adds whatever you want to footer and header of pages or posts. Simple way to try new ideas.

NextGEN Gallery - Helps organizing images into albums. Multiple upload, album view, easy management.

Social Sharing Toolkit - Adds social buttons to your posts, like facebook, tweeter. I am not really happy with it, but its most advanced plugin I've found, I tried several of thouse.

Stealth Publish - Publish new post without showing it in RSS feeds. Sometimes useful.

WordCounter.net - Counts words and characters in post or page. Useful for estimating value of translation or rewriting.

WordPress Editorial Calendar - Its easy to get lost, If you schedule posts in future. It shows nice calendar with all scheduled posts

WP-Syntax - Since I publish lots of programming code, its very useful for my visitors to see it highlighted. It makes your program code looks fancy. Syntax highlighter for Javascript, PHP, CSS, and 50+ other languages. Uses Geshi.

WPML Multilingual CMS - Makes your blog multilingual. Links sames posts with different translations. Now its commercial, I have latest free version installed.