Clint was asking me about my WordPress plugins on All Freelance Writing the other day, and then a writer group I’m with was talking about WordPress plugins as well. So it feels like a good time to talk about them here, as WordPress is probably the most popular blogging platform among readers here. I’ve shared my plugin lists in the past, but over time they change. Here are some of my favorites that I’m currently using on AFW and other blogs I run. If you want to use any of them, just go into the plugin section of your WordPress admin interface and you can do a search and install there without having to download and upload anything manually.

1. My page order — let’s you change the page link orders (for the static-like pages) so they don’t have to be alphabetical.

2. My category order — does the same thing, but for categories. It makes it easier to feature categories.

3. All-in-one SEO pack — lets you easily add meta keywords, descriptions, and titles to every page and post (and to the homepage).

4. Akismet — it’s in the default WP installation, and does a good job of catching spam comments.

5. What Would Seth Godin Do? – this lets you include a message either before or after posts, and you can have it change based on how regular a member is. For example, here I show an ad above posts to new people on their first five pageviews (to hit one-time search engine traffic), and for regular readers after those five pageviews it’s just a reminder to subscribe to the blog.

6. Feedburner Feedsmith — this automatically redirects normal wordpress feed links to your feedburner feed URL (lets you consistently track subscriber stats more easily)

7. Feedblitz Member Mail — I was talking to Feedblitz’ founder quite a while back and mentioned that it would be nice if they could integrate with WP memberships. He had this plugin put together, and it’s outstanding. When people register on your blog, they’ll get a tick box allowing them to sign up to your feed via email / email newsletter (depending on how you use Feedblitz). You can see this one in action at the Query-Free Freelancer blog.

8. Google XML Sitemaps – This creates an xml sitemap letting Google know about all of the pages on your site — if you use Google’s Webmaster Tools, you’ll know how to upload these. if not, the plugin probably won’t help much.

9. Live comment preview — It lets commenters preview their comment in real time just below where they’re typing it. No preview click needed. Sometimes themes have funky spacing in comments, so this lets them know what to expect. Start typing in the comments box below and you’ll see what I mean.

10. Subscribe to comments — It lets readers check a box if they want to be emailed when people comment on a post (like one they commented on).

11. Category Description Editor – Want to add category descriptions, but you don’t like the basic text options available by default? This plugin gives you a full editor (like you have when writing posts) so you can easily add links, images, and text formatting for category descriptions. Most themes don’t show descriptions by default, so you might have to change your template file to display them. You can see an example on our freelance writing jobs page.

12. WP Keyword Link — This is like the old aLinks plugin. You can set it up so that certain keywords or phrases will automatically become links. For example, I could have “portfolio” automatically linked to an article on this blog about writer portfolios. You can use them to interlink your articles. You can use them automatically add affiliate links (I’m not doing this because it’s more difficult to go in and add disclaimers for those). Because you can add no-follow to the links on a keyword-by-keyword basis, you could even sell private text link ads without worrying about being slapped by Google (although I personally wouldn’t let Google determine my income models). It’s a nifty little plugin.

13. Yet Another Related Posts Plugin – This is a nice little “set it and forget it” plugin. Just set it up and at the end of each post you write, you’ll automatically get a link to related posts. It helps keep visitors on your site, and it’s pretty much effortless on your part.

14. Tweet This — I got tired of the Sociable plugin this year on this blog, and needed an alternative. I went with Tweet This, and I like it a lot so far. Despite the name, it’s not just for Twitter sharing. You can also choose to add other services including Plurk, Buzz, Delicious, Digg, Facebook, Myspace, Ping, Reddit, and StumbleUpon.

There are some other, bigger, plugins that I’m currently using or will soon be using, but since they’re not publicly ready to show you yet, I’ll leave them off here. What about you though? What are your current favorite WordPress plugins?