I thought it was high time I released a list of the best plugins that I use with my WordPress installation. So here goes…

1. All in one webmaster

This plugin thanks to ArpitShah is a bundle of all the best tracking and analytics solutions available to the web and I would highly recommend it. Here is the description provided by ArpitShah:

If you are a webmaster you probably heard of “Google Webmaster Tool“. Both Yahoo and Bing have their own versions called “Yahoo SiteExplorer” and “Bing Webmaster Central“. All in One Webmaster has option to add Google, Bing, Yahoo Webmaster Meta-Tags. Single click sitemap submission to Google, Bing, Yahoo and Ask. Add tracking code for Google, Clicky, 103Bees analytics. It uses the wphead() and wpfooter() hooks built in to WordPress to add content to your header and/or footer.

2.Akismet

This plugin comes bundled with WordPress but disabled as standard. All you need to do is sign up to Akismet to get a unique API key and you are away! It gets rid of all those annoying “viagra pills free crap” spam comments from botnets.

Here is a brief description from Akismet:

We can’t stand spam.

Who can? You have better things to do with your life than deal with the underbelly of the internet. Automattic Kismet (Akismet for short) is a collaborative effort to make comment and trackback spam a non-issue and restore innocence to blogging, so you never have to worry about spam again.

3. Twitter Tools

This plugin by Alex King provides excellent Twitter functionality to your blog. Tweeting from your blog, automatic tweet on publish, HashTags and Bit.ly short URLs.

Here is a short description by Alex:

This plugin that creates an integration between your WordPress blog and your Twitter account. It allows you to pull your tweets into your blog (as posts and digests) and create new tweets on blog posts and from within WordPress.

4. WP Super Cache

This plugin by Donncha O Caoimh allows you to do cache your blog to any level you require, all managed within the plugin settings.

Here is a brief description from Super Cache:

WP Super Cache is a static caching plugin for WordPress. It generates html files that are served directly by Apache without processing comparatively heavy PHP scripts. By using this plugin you will speed up your WordPress blog significantly.

This plugin is a fork of the excellent WP-Cache 2 by Ricardo Galli Granada. WP-Cache 2 caches the pages of your WordPress blog and delivers them without accessing the database. Unfortunately it still means loading the PHP engine to serve the cached files.

5. Google XML Sitemaps

Written by Arne Branhhold, XML SiteMaps is great for SEO as it creates Google-friendly XML sitemaps which can be combined excellently with the All in One Webmaster.

Here is a brief description by Arne:

This plugin generates a XML-Sitemap compliant sitemap of yourWordPress blog. This format is supported by Ask.com, Google, YAHOO and MSN Search.

More information about what XML-Sitemaps are and how they can help you to get indexed by the major search engines can be found at Sitemaps.org and the searchenginewatch blog.

If you know of other excellent plugins please let me know