Best Wordpress plugins

WordPress is my favourite blogging platform and my blog runs on it. See a guide on how to install WordPress.

WordPress plugins are a big part of the community. Over the years I have used many of the best WordPress plugins. WordPress plugins help you make a better blog and get more reader interaction.

This post is a tribute to the top 18 most downloaded WordPress plugins ever (Akismet is not included as it comes with the default installation). Each of these 18 has been downloaded a minimum of 200,000 times.

All in One SEO Pack – Automatically optimizes your blog for Search Engines (Search Engine Optimization) – Downloads 1,603,368

Google XML Sitemaps – Create a Google sitemaps compliant XML-Sitemap of your blog – Downloads 954,459

NextGEN Gallery – A full integrated Image Gallery WordPress plugin with a Flash slideshow option – Downloads 715,819

WP.com Stats – You can have simple, concise stats with no additional load on your server by plugging into WP.com’s stat system – Downloads 712,71

WP Super Cache – A very fast caching engine that produces static html files – Downloads 492,637

Contact Form 7 – Just another contact form plugin. Simple but flexible – Downloads 393,916

Automatic upgrade – Allows a user to automatically upgrade the installation to the latest one – Downloads 288,600

Sociable – Automatically adds links to your favorite social bookmarking sites to your posts, pages and RSS feed - Downloads 284,117

Viper’s Video Quicktags – Allows easy and XHTML valid posting of videos from various websites such as YouTube, DailyMotion, Vimeo, and more – Downloads 254,807

Simple Tags – The successor of Simple Tagging Plugin and is THE perfect tool to perfectly manage your WP tags – Downloads 254,353

WP-DB-Backup – On-demand backup of your database – Downloads 250,795

Google Analytics – Adds the necessary JavaScript code to enable Google Analytics – Downloads 239,837

Google Analyticator – Same as the one above, enables Google Analytics tracking – Downloads 229,970

Add to Any: Share/Bookmark/Email Button – Helps readers share, save, bookmark, and email your posts and pages using any service, such as Facebook, Twitter, Digg, Delicious and over 100 more – Downloads 226,056

WP-Polls – Adds an AJAX poll system to your blog. You can also easily add a poll into your blog post / page – Downloads 222,196

Sidebar Widgets – Adds “Sidebar Widgets” panel under Presentation menu – Downloads 221,024

podPress – A dream WordPress plugin for podcasters – Downloads 207,491

WP-PageNavi – Adds a more advanced paging navigation your blog – Downloads 204,005

Wisdom of the crowds?

“Automatic upgrade” and “Sidebar Widgets” are the classics which are no longer needed as they are a part of software now.

From the top 18 WordPress plugins I currently only use Google XML Sitemaps, WP Super Cache and Contact Form 7 on my blog. All in one SEO Pack and Google Analytics are also very important but my Thesis theme has these functions built-in.

What do you think about the wisdom of the crowds in case of WordPress plugins? Are these the best plugins? Do you still use any of them?

Want to start your own WordPress blog and test out these plugins? This is a video I made to show you how easy it is to start a blog. You can have your blog online without any tech know-how within minutes - click here to get started.