When Joe, at Inline Bits (affiliate link), and I were building the development strategy for the new NateRiggs.com, selecting and installing the right plugins, was a critical discussion early on.

One of the reasons that I believe WordPress is such a great blog platform is the variety – and maturity – of the plugins that are available.  We mentioned some of the plugins we used in the HOW TO launch a blog post a few days back.

After some requests in the comments from Rick and Dale, I wanted to make sure I put links to the tools, as well as how I’m personally using them.  There’s no particular order here.  All of these have been selected because of their functionality and ease of use:

• Akismet – I’m not particularly sure where I first learned about Akismit, but as a spam blocker plugin goes, it works really well.  Comment spam is annoying and this plugin will save you tremendous amounts of time you might otherwise spend deleting those nasty Viagra messages.
• All in One SEO Pack – Jack Stoops, blogger and WordPress guru at Agent-SEO first turned me on to All in One SEO Pack.  My opinion is that this plugin is essential for anyone with basic knowledge of how search optimization works.  What I love best is that it actually has character limit reminders built in to make sure you don’t go too crazy on the meta data.  The fields are east to use and totally WYSIWYG.
• Apture – Have you ever scrolled over a link or image on a blog and noticed a box pop up with a screenshot and more information?  If so, it’s probably driven by Apture.  This plugin will even pull in social media profile data if you link to people in your posts.  It’s pretty slick and can help to increase your visitors time on the page, while reducing your bounce rate.
• Disqus Comment System – DISQUS is one of the best comment systems you can use.  What I enjoy most – from the admin perspective – is it’s ease to use and the ability to comment directly on your readers’ comments, making individual, yet visible, conversations much easier on your blog.
• GigPress – GigPress is a WordPress plugin that is intended for bands, but also works very well for a speaking tour.  All you need to do is set up each event as a venue and include the location in the notes.  Mr. Joe Payton recommended this one and it’s really easy to use.  Love it!
• Hello Dolly – I have no idea why it’s so hard for me to delete the Hello Dolly WordPress plugin.  What’s worse, I have no idea what it’s for.  But is does make me chuckle from time to time.  All that said, if you’d like to see creator and artist, Matt Mullenweg speak, he’ll be keynoting the upcoming Big Omaha Conference in May.  Matt’s an uber smart guy.
• MM Forms – This is another must-have WordPress plugin if you are looking to develop a blog focused on conversion.  MM Forms gives you the ability to create custom forms with very little coding required.
• Scribe – Want a guide to help make SEO on your blog easier?  Scribe is the WordPress plugin you need.  Combined with All in One SEO Pack, this plugin will actually help you get better at SEO copywriting.  Thanks go out to Hannah DeMilta for turning me onto Scribe (and to Brian Clark at Copyblogger.com).
• Search Everything – A lot of people are using Ligit for search on their blogs.  We opted for the Search Everything plugin due to the ease of use and how flexible it is.
• TweetMeme Retweet Button – This is probably one of the more popular plugins in the last few months.  What I like most about TweetMeme is that it helps to encourage ReTweets by making the number of times your post has been retweeted on Twitter visible.
• Twitter for WordPress – Out of all the WordPress plugins for Twitter, this one seems to be the easiest to customize.
• WordPress Related Posts – Your major advantage with using a related posts is having a means to drive visitors deeper into your blog.  At the end of each post, this WordPress plugin will automatically display more of your work that might be interesting to the reader.
• WP-Paginate – This WordPress plugin aids in navigation and increasing and improving the SEO on your blog.

What do you think?  Are you using any of these plugins on your blog?  Did I miss anything?

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