Prof Web Marketing

1. Askimet – Yes, it comes with Wordpress and I know there are other options for spam control.  Feel free to add what you use in the comments.

2. Close Old Posts This is handy for battling spam comments that can get through later on.  Many people look for old post’s to link to their Viagra site’s.  You can set the number of days to leave your post’s open.  After the number of days has passed, the comments box will be gone.

3. Google (XML) Sitemaps Generator This plugin generates a XML-Sitemap compliant sitemap of your WordPress blog. This format is supported by Ask.com, Google, YAHOO and MSN Search.

4. Platinum SEO Pack This plugin was developed when support for All in SEO stopped.  As I understand, All in SEO has resumed development, however I’m sticking with this one.

5. RSS Footer You can’t stop the scrapers from stealing your content via RSS.  However with this plugin, you get a link back to your site when they do. From one of my favorite Wordpress developers – Joost de Valk.  @yoast on Twitter.

6. Sociable Also developed by @yoast, but now being developed by Blog Play.  This is one plugin you don’t want to be without.  With the power of social media climbing, you want to give your readers an easy way to share your work with the rest of the online community.

7. Tweetmeme This Wordpress plugin allows your readers to easily tweet and retweet links to you post’s.  It put’s a “Digg” style badge at the top, bottom or both of your articles.

8. WP Contact Form Originally written by Ryan Duff, this was a great contact form that could be added to your post or page.  Now enhanced and supported by Douglas Karr.  @douglaskarr on Twitter.

9. WP Security Scan Scans your WordPress installation for security vulnerabilities and suggests corrective actions.  Very simple to use for the ease of finding some security holes you may not have known about in your blog.

And there you have the plugins that I currently use.  Know of any that I should be using?  Please let me know in the comments below!