Having worked with WordPress for about as long as the system has been around, I have seen a lot of great plugins come and go. But over the years I have come to really like certain plugins over others, and find that I am often looking to the same few plugins to achieve the results that I need. So I have compiled a list below of some of my favorite WordPress plugins… While this list is not meant to be a complete list of the best WordPress plugins available, it is a decent starting point.
What are your favorite WordPress plugins? Post yours with links in the comments section below.
Exec-PHP
The Exec-PHP plugin executes php code in your posts, pages and text widgets.
Google Analytics for WordPress
Track your WordPress site easily and with lots of metadata: views per author & category, automatic tracking of outbound clicks and pageviews.
WP Maintenance Mode
Adds a splash page to your site that lets visitors know your site is down for maintenance. Full access to the back- & front-end is optional.
Social Profiles Widget
This plugin/widget allows you to insert icon links to your social profiles in any widgetized area.
YouTube White Label Shortcode
A simple shortcode to embed white label YouTube videos using the latest iframe HTML5 embed.
Simple Lightbox
A simple, themeable, and customizable Lightbox for WordPress
Widget Logic
Widget Logic lets you control on which pages widgets appear. It uses any of WP's conditional tags.
WordPress SEO by Yoast
Yoast's all in one SEO solution for your WordPress blog: SEO titles, meta descriptions, XML sitemaps, breadcrumbs & much more.
Simple Facebook Connect
Makes it easy for your site to use Facebook Connect, in a wholly modular way.
Twitter Tools
Twitter Tools is a plugin that creates a complete integration between your WordPress blog and your Twitter account.
Category Posts Widget
Adds a widget that shows the most recent posts in a single category.
Sociable
Automatically add links on your posts, pages and RSS feed to your favorite social bookmarking sites.
WP Super Edit
Get control of the WordPress wysiwyg visual editor and add some functionality with more buttons and custom TinyMCE plugins.
Simple 301 Redirects
Simple 301 Redirects provides an easy method of redirecting requests to another page on your site or elsewhere on the web.
Disqus Comment System
The Disqus comment system replaces your WordPress comment system with your comments hosted and powered by Disqus.
Google Fonts
The WP Google Fonts plugin allows you to easily add fonts from the Google Font Directory to your WordPress theme.
Contact Form 7
Just another contact form plugin. Simple but flexible.
Easy Nivo Slider
Adds Nivo Slider to a post/page with no coding. Builds sliders from a post images, featured images in posts, or from NextGen galleries.
Easing Slider
The Easing Slider is an image slider plugin for WordPress which uses the jQuery Easing plugin.
Content Slider by SlideDeck
Create SlideDecks on your WordPress blogging platform. Manage SlideDeck content and insert them into templates and posts.
WordPress Multilingual Plugin
WPML makes it easy to build multilingual sites and run them. It’s powerful enough for corporate sites, yet simple for blogs.
WP Super Cache
A very fast caching engine for WordPress that produces static html files.
Duplicate Post
Creates a copy of a post or page.
