I’ve recently updated several of my WordPress sites. I took this opportunity to check my plugin lists and see if there are any new or updated plugins that I had to have for every WordPress installation. Here is a list that I’ll probably add to about 90% of my new WordPress installs in no particular order:

  • Simple Facebook Connect/Twitter Tools-This one-two punch makes it much easier to notify your social media network whenever you update your site.
  • Sociable-Tons of ways to add those little buttons that let your visitors syndicate your content over several dozen different social media type sites and get your content out.
  • WPtouch iPhone Theme-I recently got an iPhone and love it when I visit sites with this plugin.
  • Contact Form 7-I used cforms II for a long time but it I couldn’t use the one click upgrade with all versions. This plugin is simpler to configure than cforms II and is still pretty flexible.
  • Google Analyticator-Lots of ways to track activity (admin pages, outbound links, etc.) on your site using Google Analytics
  • FD Feedburner Plugin-I was using Feedburner’s WordPress plugin but can’t seem to find it anymore on their site. This plugin gives you an easy way to redirect WordPress’ standard feed to your Feedbuner feed where you have access to all sorts of neat tricks and stats.
  • Subscribe2– My mom will never, never, never use an RSS feed but does read email. For those people who don’t subscribe using RSS, this plugin will let them learn of changes to your site the old fashioned way via email.
  • Google XML Sitemaps-Automatically builds a special site map for Google that helps them index the content of your site.
  • WP Super Cache-Speeds up your WordPress site by serving static HTML pages rather than dynamic PHP pages. Good for sites that run on shared hosts.
  • All in One SEO Pack-A little more automated than other SEO plugins, but still allows you to fine tune everything.