Best Wordpress plugins

[fish]

Given that the Wordpress plugins thread has been closed I thought I'd start this one. There seems to be lots of members using wordpress for their sites (and why not? it's free, it's very adaptable & easy to use) so an updated list of plugins you find invaluable would benefit all:

I have started to migrate from using this plugin all in one SEO to >Wordpress SEO. It's amazingly configurable and has some tiptop actions that create the ultimate SEO options for your sites. Be prepared to read up on it first and then spend a lot of time optimising your sites, well worth it though

 

[Admin]

I like that I can use the Google sitemaps and analytics plug-ins so that you can get good stats on your SEO efforts.

Admin

 

[Ashton]

Nearly every site I make has:

All in one SEO
Redirect Plugin
Akismet
Contact Forms

And then some extra depending on the site.

 

[wb]

All in one SEO
Contact form
Exclude pages
Google Analytics
Google Sitemap generator
Redirection

 

[arv]

All in one SEO
Google sitemap generator
Contact form
Whydoworkadsense
Easy privacy policy
Wp super cache

 

[illtemper]

For SEO I use:

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/gregs-high-performance-seo/

Can't be beaten for configuration options. All in One SEO is probably better for those that don't want too many options.

As for best it all depends on the site you are producing but these are my general essential plugins:

Gregs high performance SEO
Exec-PHP - php code in posts/widgets
SEO Friendly Images
wp-insert - ad management
WP-PageNavi - pagination
WP-Custom - If you use more than one custom field this plugin is a huge time saver.

Otherwise I try and use as few plugins as possible and often integrate the features I need direct into the functions.php to reduce database calls.