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?

Akismet – Who doesn’t love Akismet? This is a comment spam filter to weed out all the nasty spammers trying to build links at your expense (including the often unsavory types). No need to download anything – Akismet comes with your WordPress installation. Just activate it and follow the instructions.

Add-Meta-Tags Plugin – This plugin allows you to add meta descriptions, keywords, or any other meta tags you’d like to your blog homepage, categories, and even custom meta tags for individual post pages. If you’re an SEO-junkie, you might care about such things. The meta description in some cases is also the description that shows up in search results. While the developer site says it’s compatible up to version 2.3, I’ve been using here just fine and dandy with 2.6.  – Download it.

Feedburner Feedsmith Plugin – If, like me, you like to run your blog feeds through Feedburner, this is a nice addition. You won’t have to manually update your feed links. Just install the plugin, enter your feedburner feed URL in the settings, and your RSS feeds will re-route to your Feedburner URL instead. Sweet. I love simplicity.  – Download it.

WordPress Automatic Upgrade – This has to be, by far, my favorite WordPress plugin. I only started using it recently, because I was hesitant about trusting a plugin to update my installations. What did I ever do before it?  I run a lot of WordPress-driven sites and blogs. In most cases, I install through my host automatically through Fantastico, but occasionally I have to do a manual installation (like when Fantastico isn’t up-to-date, and I need to install a new blog). So when upgrades come around, some are easy, and some are a royal pain in the pettuti. I’m completely in love with this plugin. It lets me back things up, and then do the upgrade, all from my wordpress admin with no hassles. Once in a while it doesn’t reactivate all of my plugins, but a quick check fixes that in no time – beats manual upgrades any day! You need this plugin, especially if you run multiple blogs. Download it. Seriously.

aLinks / SEO Smart Links Plugins – OK. These are two plugins. I use aLinks on this blog. I love it. It’s uber-cool. It lets you assign specific keyword phrases to specific URLs. For example, I could set the keyword phrase “Web writing” on my All Freelance Writing Posts to automatically link to my Web Writer’s Guide blog or e-book page. You can also decide how many times to let the link appear in each post (so you don’t have a link every time that phrase appears – only the first time). So what? Why does that matter? Well, it lets you easily (and effortlessly after setup) interlink your own blogs, cross-link blog posts, add affiliate links if you regularly mention a book or product, etc. Cool, yes? One apparent problem – OK two. First, it doesn’t seem the download site is live anymore (and it’s not being supported I guess either). Second, people have said it slows down their admin or doesn’t let them login. On 2.6.2 I’ve had no issues whatsoever with it. However, since you can’t get it, and since the concept is just wonderful for anyone looking to increase revenues or improve reader metrics with more pageviews per visit, I found a substitute for you. I haven’t tried it yet. I will though eventually on one of my other blogs, and if I like it as much, I’ll install it here too. In the meantime, it’s called SEO Smart Links. Download it and tell me what you think!

Have any other to-die-for plugins to share? Post a link to them in the comments with a description of what they do.