WordPress is a great blogging platform, in my opinion, the best. And if there is some feature not present in it, you can always install a plugin to get that functionality. There are few plugins which I believe to be must have for any wordpress user. (though I know some people who may not agree with it 
)
Subscribe to Comments: Unless you have comments disabled on your blog, this is the most important plugin to have (and the reason why I am even writing this post). Nothing is more frustrating for a commenter than to keep visiting the site to check new comments. Subscribe to Comments, as the name implies, allows commenter to subscribe (or unsubscribe) to the comments on post, every new comment posted after that will be emailed to all subscribed commenter.
Unfortunately, many bloggers don’t add such functionality to their blog, if that’s the case, you should poke them to install the plugin, if they still don’t install it, you can always use some comment tracking service like coComment, which enables you to track your conversations on different blogs on a single page.
All in One SEO: I don’t like to spend my time optimizing sites for search engines, but the sad truth is if you site doesn’t appear (and rank well) in search engines, people won’t be able to find it easily. And no matter how good your content is, if people can’t find it, it’s useless. That is why I like All in One SEO. Even though it is not needed to appear in search engines, it is useful to increase search ranking by removing duplicates, adding meta tags etc. If you like you can use additional SEO plugins too, but if not you should have atleast something basic like this.
WordPress Database Backup: Those who have never lost their data, usually does not feel the need to backup their data, that is, until they actually lose it. Even if you are sure nothing will go wrong, it’s better to be safe than sorry. WordPress Database Backup allows you to backup your database without any hassle. Just select any additional table present in your database that you may wanto to backup (additional to core wordpress database) and press the button to back it up on server, download it or email it to yourself. You can also schedule regular backups emailed to you.
WordPress Related Posts: Okay, this is not a must-have plugin, but I have still included it in this list as it’s one of those nice-to-have one. WordPress Related Posts simply add links to automatically generated related posts, found using post tags, at the bottom of the post. This makes it easier for the user, who has come to a specific post from searchengine to find more posts according to his interest.
Let me know if there is any other plugin you consider to be must-have.
Hi,
Thanks for mentioning coComment.
We also have a plugin for WordPress (http://www.cocomment.com/tools/comment) that can be installed on the blog as a service for the commenters. It also makes your blog more discoverable from coComment community.
With coComment, notifications of new comments can also be done via email, but this solution might not please all users (if you comment a lot, you might be “spammed” with notifications). With coComment, you can see your updated conversations on a single page, or, subscribe to your conversation RSS feeds, which makes tracking conversation much easier.
Chritophe,
Thanks for your feedback. I have looked at coComment wordpress plugin before and took another look just now. Only problem I have with them, is that it replaces the wordpress commenting system, which I don’t want to do right now.
If it could add to / enhance the current commenting system instead of replacing it, I would love it, though I am not sure if that can be done or not.
Actually we have two plugins:
– The one you mention that we call “outsourced integration”
– A plugin that integrates with your existing commenting system, we call this one “standard integration”
I was referring to the second one. You keep your commenting system, and we enhance it with coComment features (tracking, sharing). You can then also install our sidebar widgets to get last comments, top commenters on your blog. Also, if you comment yourself on other blogs, you can add a widget to display your own comments, so your blog contains not only your posts, but also the comments you leave everywhere.
If you need any help to setup this plugin, please contact me by email.
Christophe, thanks, got it working. Let’s see how it goes now.
Helpful man. I installed the related posts plugin. But the link to the db backup plugin leads to the related posts one.
SAWJ
Thanks, link updated.
Akismet(Comes with WordPress)
Wp-Cache
ozh-admin-drop-down-menu
These are my recommendations.
Very interesting and useful article.
I have been reading your blog for the last few hours, and everything has been very informative and well written. I just wanted to tell you that for some reason this post doesn’t seem to work in Firefox. On a side note, I was wondering if you wanted to swap blogroll links? I hope to hear from you soon!
All in one SEO is a must. Askimet is good too.