The longer I use Wordpress for our blog and other sites I build the more and more I love it’s flexibility and ease of use. From complicated ecommerce sites to simple 10 pages sites for non-techie clients Wordpress’s simplicity makes it easy to teach people how to use and even modify their site without being dependent on anyone.

Here are my favorite plugins that make Wordpress great!

All in One SEO Pack

Provides all your SEO abilities in one easy to use plug-in.

AJAX Comments

Lets users add comments without having to refresh the page using Web 2.0 AJAX goodness.

Askimet

This comes packaged by default with Wordpress but it’s vital you get an API key and activate this plug in, that is unless you want to help spammers sell viagra.

Dofollow

Why let Google outsource it’s quality control to you?? Add the dofollow plugin to remove the “rel=”nofollow” attribute from comments on your site.

Google XML Sitemaps

This tool is great for easily adding an XML Sitemap to your site so Google can better index you, especially if your entire site is built in Wordpress.

Sociable

Automatically adds links to the bottom of every post/page (at your discretion) that allows your users to easily submit and up-vote (hopefully) your content.

Wordpress Back Up Tool

Great tool for people who can’t handle phpMyAdmin for pulling a database backup. (back up early and often!!)

Wordpress Automatic Upgrade

This tool makes it easy to upgrade your site to the latest version of Wordpress without having to play with FTP. Just make sure you back up your site first and navigate to http://www.yoursite.com/wp-admin/update.php after running this to make sure you update your database.

Know any other cool plugins?? Please leave links in the comments.