My Top Five Wordpress Plugins

If you love customizing your blog as much as I do, then you just might be using the free Wordpress blogging platform. I personally love wordpress, and I don’t think I’ve stayed with any other blogging platform longer. So far, it looks like I’m going to be sticking with wordpress indefinitely. One of the great things about wordpress is the ability to add plugins for even more customizing options. And if I had to choose just 5 plugins to keep installed these are the ones I would choose…

1. Akismet, seriously, if you don’t install this you are going to go insane with the stupid spam commenters. It was sooo quick and easy to install, and is so easy to use…. there’s no reason not to use it.
2. Broken Link Checker, if you like to link to other blogs and sites a lot then this is a must in order to keep your past posts still current. If potential readers find an older post that is full of dead links, they may not stick around. But with this plugin installed, at a glance in your Dashboard you will see how many broken links your blog contains and the interface makes it pretty easy to find and fix these links either by updating it or by removing it. I love it.
3. Redirectify, this plugin allows me to create “pages” that actually link to outside sites, like my DST Gallery. You can use it to link to your Facebook profile, your Kaboodle page, your store, etc… it’s great!
4. Feed Footer, I love using this plugin as a way to treat my readers who subscribe to my feeds either by email or in an RSS feed reader with special links that aren’t seen otherwise. I also use it to advertise my affiliates, as the more my blog makes… the more I can afford to give back.
5. WordPress Database Backup, this is one that I certainly cannot forget about! I am terrible about remembering to backup things, anything! But with this, my comments and posts all get backed up and emailed to me on a weekly basis! And it’s totally customizable, it can save it on your server or email it to you… and you can choose how often it does this. I definitely recommend adding this one to your must add list!

Well, I hope this helped some of you who are using or are considering using Wordpress as your blogging platform.

What is your must-have Wordpress plugin(s)?