Andy Beal recently posted his own list of 21 of the Best WordPress Plugins which includes some of my own personal favorites and some that I’m definitely going to try out.

Whatever your blog may need, whether its SEO, advertising, or some technical tweaks, there’s probably a WP plugin out there somewhere that can do it. When I install a new WP blog for a client, I include 3 plugins as part of the installation because without plugins, your WP site isn’t going to function at the level to which it has the potential.

At the very minimum, the 3 plugins I recommend for every blog are these:

Akismet - Without spam protection, you’ll find yourself wasting a lot of time moderating and deleting comments. As a little experiment, I set up one of my WP sites without activating Akismet to see how bad the spam issue really is. I was getting slammed with like 40 comments at a time with nothing but junk and gibberish in them and I was getting them on multiple posts. Total pain in the rear and a waste of my time.

All in One SEO Pack - You don’t need to be an SEO expert and you probably have no desire to even mess with all of that technical algorithm stuff and spending hours reading reports and guides about how to climb up the search engine ladder. Using the All in One SEO Pack makes it a little bit easier. It’s not going to do it all for you but it will at least cover the basics.

cforms II - Every blog should have a contact form. You want your readers to be able to reach you, right? Well I prefer using contact forms over just posting your email address on the sidebar somewhere. And for your readers, its more private than leaving a comment. I know there are a lot of contact form plugins or templates out there but I’ve been using this one for a while without any issues.

So there you have it. Not as comprehensive as Andy Beal’s list but its a good start. And if you need any help finding or installing WP plugins, just let me know.