:: I have added plugins to this list to resubmit for Thursday Thirteen 06/04/2009.

I thought it would be helpful to list the wordpress plugins I use on my own sites and tell you why. I use these plugins because they make maintaining a blog easier and therefore multiple blogs as well. Wordpress has thousands of plugins, which is why it’s my CMS of choice. There are many options out there, but Wordpress is the only one that can do anything and everything, all on the same script. If I want to open a store, create a magazine, anything I want to do is possible with Wordpress and its plugins. It makes it hard to imagine why anyone would choose anything else.

Akismet – This comes with your Wordpress blog and you should enable it right away to keep spam comments to a minimum.

Bubs Button Board –  Everyone likes to get a free link, so add this to your site. Get them to come to post their own links, then get them to stay with your great design and content. 

Contact Form 7 -  Great contact form script with multiple forms. Very easy to use.

Clean Archives – Shows a list of your archives in a page in a clean, easy to read format.

Do Follow – I use this plugin on my personal site  because I don’t really care about page rank or anything and I think it’s fair that my commenters get link credit.

FlareSmith – A plugin to match my Feedburner account with my blog.

FlickrRSS – Allows me to display my most recent Flickr photos right on my blog. They’re listed at the bottom of my sidebar.

Get Recent Comments – Allows me to show appreciation to my commenters by listing their link in my sidebar with “do follow”.

I Am Reading – Displays the book you’re currently reading, the page you’re on, and the link to  buy it from your Amazon Associate account. Good little way to make some extra money.

Link Hopper – Allows you to mask outside links as links to pages on your own site. This looks good to the search engines giving your site a higher rank.

Really Simple CAPTCHA – Adds Captcha to forms on your site. Used with the contact form or on your posts.

TwitMe – Twitme posts on your Twitter when you post a new post, and also lets you post to twitter from your Wordpress admin. I have separate twitter accounts for my portfolio, my personal site, and my hosting site so this helps me manage them all without having to go crazy trying to remember which one I’m signed in to.

WP-PageNavi – Makes navigation my pages easier. Takes out the “Previous Entries” and lists them as page numbers.

I’m always looking for new, good plugins to enhance my site. If you know of any really great plugins that would be useful, please list them here.