WordPress Plugins?
 

What plug-in are you using for your WordPress blog?
RSS, Gallery, Videos, Administration etc.

I am starting a new blog, and I have a clean install of WP, what do you recommend?

I know about the codex documents, but there are so many of them.

I will admit it; I am looking for a shortcut to get going.

Thanks in advance to all of you.

The two that I use that I consider "musts" are:

Google Site Map and Ultimate Tag Warrior

I use
Post Star Rating
Wp Polls
Wp Cache
and google site map

I just started with wordpress myself, but first plugin I have is "dofollow". It removes the "nofollow" tag from links in your comments, which is good since otherwise nobody will want to do backtracking with you.

Thanks, It gives me a start.
Anyone else? Anything that is absolutely necessary?

How do you do backtracking?

ok, first the term is trackback(ing).

If I see a post you've written that for some reason I like or is pertenant to something I post about and I add your URL to my post, I create what is called a pingback and if your post is set up to accept pingbacks then when your blog is notified my mine that I posted your URL, then your blog will add my post title and a link to the comments section of the post that I referred to...

Now a trackback is similar to a pingback. The difference being that I not only add your URL to my post but I also add your URL into the trackback area within my post section. Then rather than pinging just the title of my post and my URL, my blog will send your blog a snippet of the text I entered which gets put in your comments section.

Clear as mud? Hopefully I have an English version of this available for post someday soon!

OK, thanks walrus,

It does make a bit of sense, and I see how this would be good.
Like I said before, first time I am setting up a blog, so I am on a learning curve. LOOOOG lerning curve!

I find that Shortstat is an invaluable plugin. It gives you information about where your traffic is coming from and lots of other goodies!
http://dev.wp-plugins.org/wiki/wp-shortstat

thanks, I will look into it.
It sound very good!

Akismet is a necessary evil as well, to keep your blog clean of automated spam.

Jackets, I installed Shortstats after finding your recommendation here, activated it from the dashboard, but I'm not getting any information on stats:-(

Any idea what I could be doing wrong?

Thanks, Mina:-)

Make sure you have the proper version of ShortStats for the right version of Wordpress your running. I had the same problem at one point and depending on which version of wordpress depends on where you need to get shortstats.

Related Posts is a good plugin for giving your visitors something extra to click and also for helping the SE's find your content. It allows you to automatically list under each article, links to related articles (3-5 works nicely).

Ah ty Nails, I'll check that.:)

does anyone know a plugin to keep ampersands (&) from changing into the character code &?

I use:
Smart Update Pinger & Jerome's Keywords (similare to Walrus' mention of Tag Warrior, I think) both available from here
MyLinkOrder - Easily change the order of links and link categories on your sidebar rather than the way WP tells you to have them.
Post Updated - add a "Updated on..." after the "Posted on..." date for updated posts.
Redirect Old Slugs - Could be useful as your a beginner and might be changing things next week :)
SpeedyCat - Quickly add new categories while writing a post.
vPIP - For putting video into your posts
and last but not least (for now anyway)
Wordpress Heat Map - for putting a category 'cloud' on your blog

I have a few others (some homemade), but these are used the most often

That MyLinkOrder one is just what I needed oast, thanks for that :)

I was trying for weeks to find a way for Wordpress to do what that plugin does, and then stumbled across it one evening whilst doing something completely random and unrelated :)

A few more I use include:
Adhesive - For creating 'sticky' posts
FeedWordPress - For aggregating RSS feeds as posts
Get Custom Field Values - Retrieve and display custom meta data

walrus,

I looked at XXX Blog Maniac, (and I like it)|thumb but I have two questions:
1. How do you get your toon on the bottom corner and make it stay there?
2. What do you use to play the video in your blog?|bow|

I'll answer the questions... after all, I've answered one already. :)

Answer to question 1)
It's a CSS thing. In the body declaration you tell the browser to display a graphic file whereever you want it to appear... and do not move, even if the page is scolled. You do that like this:
Answer to question 2)
Walrus who told me about it in another post

oast, Thanks for the quick answer.

That graphic info is great, and the video, I just looked at the plugins you mentioned before and I found it, but after I posted the message. Again thanks for confirming that it is the one I am looking for.