One of the greatest advantages to the WordPress platform is the ability to add plugins to further customize your blog and add advanced functionality for your readers. With a huge archive of plugins, it can be difficult to know where to start.
Akismet is one of the most popular WordPress plugins. It protects your comments from spam bots, and does such an effective job of it that it is included as a default plugin with many web hosts. Since spam bots are becoming more prolific with every passing year, this can be vital to prevent endless comment spamming.
For the marketing minded, the All in One SEO Pack plugin aids with your search engine optimization. Search engine optimization, or SEO, is the best way to get the word out for your website. By using SEO properly you can receive accurate search engine rankings and increased visibility.
Since speed can be critical in retaining your visitors, the WP Super Cache is an extremely popular plugin which maintains a static cache of your pages. This reduces server load and thereby increases loading speed, which can be especially useful when using shared hosting.
The Google Analytics plugin ties in with Google statistics to educate you about your demographics. These statistics will tell you how many hits you’re getting, when you’re getting them, and even their nation of origin. If this isn’t enough, the All in One Webmaster plugin also has a Google Analytics function and will submit your sitemap to Google, Bing, Yahoo and Ask.
If you need to keep events for any reason, the All-in-One Event Calendar plugin is the perfect way to do it. This plugin is highly rated and often downloaded, and will allow you to create an easily modifiable calendar to keep track of all your important events.
There are thousands of excellent and well supported plugins in the WordPress community for practically any purpose, so if you ever find yourself at a loss, you can just search the plugin site for an answer.