WordPress is the ultimate blogging software. There are hundreds of WordPress Plugin tools available to make your WordPress blogging experience smoother, better, and really cool. Head over to the WordPress plugin respository and have a look around – so many plugins to choose from! If you are just getting started with blogging, and not sure which blog platform to use, read my article. “Get Your Own Domain Name and Host for Blogging“.Here are nine WordPress plugins to drop-in and start using to maximize your blogging experience for both you and your readers:

Akismet – the ultimate spam killer
Akismet is a default, preinstalled WordPress plugin. Akismet checks your comments against the Akismet web service to see if they look like spam or not. You can review the spam it catches under “Manage” and it automatically deletes old spam after 15 days.  Youll need an API key. Get a free one by heading over to WordPress.com and signing up for an account. Have you ever been excited to see comments in your Moderation queue only to find they were all spam!

Daiko’s YouTube Video Widget
This super cool YouTube Video plugin adds a sidebar widget to display random YouTube videos of your own choice. Make your own videolist in the widget-control-panel and  add your favorite tag(s), user(s). It’s easy to set up and gives your readers something to do in case they get bored. The YouTube video widget is also  great way to share your favorite YouTube videos with your readers. You can view in the sidebar.

Recent Comments
The Recent Comments plugin shows  excerpts of the most recent comments and / or trackbacks posted to the articles in your blog. This is a great way to increase readership and page views on your blog. It is part of WordPress already, so use it!

Secure and Accessible PHP Contact Form
The Internet is all about community and communicating so it makes sense that you should provide a way for people in the blogosphere to contact you. The Secure & Accessible contact form is designed to make contacting you from your website easy, accessible, and secure. It will definitely deter spam emails from arriving in your mail box! It’s super easy to install too – a must have WordPress plugin.

Digg This
The Digg This WordPress plugin detects incoming links from Digg.com to your WordPress post and automatically display a link back to the digg post. Then, people can easily digg your story. When a digg is first recognized an email is sent to the blog administrator. The detection is based on the referrer URL, which has to come from digg. Not sure what Digg is? Head over to my article, “Eleven Awesome Social Bookmarking Site” and start digging!

Google (XML) Sitemap Generator for WordPress
This Google Sitemap plugin generates an XML-Sitemap compliant sitemap of your WordPress blog. This format is supported by Ask.com, Google, YAHOO, and MSN Search. Wondering what a sitemap is and why you need it? Head over to Sitemaps.org. Be sure to check out Google Webmaster Tools as well. The Google Sitemap tools are great for knowing exactly where you stand with Google search.

Wasabi Related Posts
The Related Posts plugin will display a series of “related” entries (based on keyword matching) for an individual blog article. The Related Posts plugin is yet another great tool to keep readers on your site and gain even more exposure to more article. Increased pageviews for you! 

WordPress Database Backup
Yes, you need to backup your WordPress database! What would happen if some huge Web server crash destroyed your entire database and all known backups? With this plugin, you will still have a backup of your WordPress blog! You can have the backup file emailed to you or download on the spot for convenience. The Database Backup plugin is preinstalled with WordPress, so use it!

Adsense Deluxe
If you are a fan of Adsense then you need the Adsense Deluxe plugin for WordPress. AdSense-Deluxe provides advanced options for managing the automatic insertion of Google AdSense or Yahoo Publisher Network (YPN) ads to your WordPress posts.

What’s your favorite plugin?