Ten Best WordPress Plugins for Your WordPress Blog

If you have created a blog for your website, most likely you created it with WordPress. A blog created with WordPress is functional without any plugins but will require a lot more work. Plugins improve the functionality of your blog experience such as eliminating spam, monitoring traffic to your site, etc.
Installing a plugin is a relatively easy procedure in most cases. Wordpress offers a simple procedure to add a plugin to your blog.
• First go to the Administration Panels and click on the Plugin tab.
• Once the plugin is uploaded to your WordPress blog, activate it on the Plugins Management screen and your plugin should work.
• Be sure to do your homework before installing WordPress Plugins. Read over the readme.txt files and instructions for installation.
Ten Best Plugins for Your WordPress Blog
1. A spamblocker such as Bad Behavior or SK2 is the first plugin that I recommend. A WordPress blog without any protection will likely fill up with unwanted comments and advertisements. Some web hosting services offer preinstalled critical plugins such as this in their line of web hosting products along with other perks such as free or low cost domain name registration. Free web hosting services seldom offer these perks without an additional cost which is something to consider when looking for a provider.
2. Captcha is another plugin that is a deterrent to unwanted traffic. This is the distorted group of letters that prove that an actual human is posting to your blog.
3. Digg This is a plugin that detects incoming links from Digg.com. A link displays automatically back to the Digg post, so people can Digg your story. An email will let you know when someone Diggs your blog.
4. WordPress Database Backup comes installed with WordPress and provides an easy way to backup your WordPress database. The backup file can be downloaded or you can have it emailed to the address of your choice.
5. Google Sitemap Generator generates a Google Sitemaps compliant sitemap for your WordPress blog which helps Google to index all the pages on your blog. When the blog is updated or content is added, the plugin generates a new sitemap for Google to use. This is a timesaver and will help your site get indexed by Google much faster.
6. Recent Comments comes with WordPress and retrieves a list of the most recent comments. The Recent Comments plugin helps increase blog page views and encourages people to comment more.
7. No Ping Wait - plugin speeds up posting by moving generic pings to execute-pings.php.
8. Gravatars make your blog more personable by adding a graphic next to each person’s comments.
9. WP-ContactForm is a great way for people to contact you without emailing you which saves time and helps avoid spam.
10. CG-FlashyTitles - to make your blog look nice. Graphical flash titles for WP.