The document provides recommendations for various WordPress plugins categorized into different functions: must-use plugins like Akismet for spam protection and Disqus for comments; backup plugins; SEO plugins; analytics plugins; caching plugins; contact form plugins; social sharing plugins; Adsense plugins; photo gallery plugins; e-commerce plugins; payment plugins; donations plugins; and affiliate plugins. It describes the purpose and benefits of several popular plugins for each category to enhance and customize a WordPress blog.

1. Must Use Plugins
 Akismet – best guard against comment spam for WordPress blog!
 DisqusCommentSystem - The Disqus comment system replaces your WordPress
comment system with your comments hosted and powered by Disqus.
Database and File Backup Plugins
 BackUpWordPress – BackUpWordPress will back up your entire site including your
database and all your files on a schedule that suits you.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
 WordPress SEO by Yoast – Yoast’s all in one SEO solution for your WordPress blog:
SEO titles, Meta descriptions, XML sitemaps, breadcrumbs & much more.
 Google XML Sitemaps – This plugin generates a XML-Sitemap compliant sitemap of
your WordPress blog. This format is supported by Ask.com, Google, YAHOO and
MSN Search. The SEO plugins listed above can also do the sitemap for you.
 All in One SEO Pack – Out-of-the-box SEO for your WordPress blog. Install the all in
one seo pack or the “WordPress SEO by Yoast” plugin (you don’t need to install
both).
Blog Statistics Related
 Google Analytics for WordPress – This plugin makes it simple to add Google
Analytics with extra search engines and automatic clickout and download tracking to
your WordPress blog.
 WordPress.com Stats – Tracks views, post/page views, referrers, and clicks. This
plugin requires a WordPress.com API key to function.
 WordPress Popular Posts - WordPress Popular Posts is a highly customizable widget
that displays the most popular posts on your blog.
 WP-Polls – Adds an AJAX poll system to your WordPress blog. Allows you to easily
include a poll into your WordPress’s blog post/page.
Caching Plugin
 W3 Total Cache – The fastest and most complete WordPress performance
optimization plugin. After you use the w3 total cache plugin you won’t go back to
using WP Super Cache.
 WP Super Cache – WP Super Cache is a static caching plugin for WordPress. It
generates html files that are served directly by Apache without processing
comparatively heavy PHP scripts. By using this plugin you will speed up your
WordPress blog significantly.

2. Contact Forms Related
 Contact Form 7 – Contact Form 7 can manage multiple contact forms, plus you can
customize the form and the mail contents flexibly with simple markup. The form
supports Ajax-powered submitting, CAPTCHA, Akismet spam filtering and so on.
 Gravity Forms – Build and publish your WordPress forms in just minutes. No
drudgery, just quick and easy form-building
.
Social Networking
 Digg Digg – Your all in one share buttons plugin. Add a floating bar with share
buttons to your blog. Just like Mashable!
 Share This – This is a very useful plugin that allows your visitors to share a post/page
with others. Supports e-mail and posting to social bookmarking sites.
 Fat Free WordPress Social Share Buttons Plugin – This is a very simple and FAT
FREE share button plugin that adds Google plus one, Facebook and Twitter share
buttons to your blog posts.
For Google Adsense
 Simple Google Adsense insertion – Easy to use WordPress plugin to insert Google
Adsense to your posts, pages and sidebar.
 Google Adsense Plugin – Google AdSense Plugin allows you to set parameters of the
ads displaying, such as format (text ad, image, text with an image or link), size, color
of the elements in the ad block, rounded corners and the ad block position on the
website.
 Google Adsense – The AdSense Plugin enables you to easily use Google’s products –
including Webmaster Tools – with your WordPress site.
Photo Gallery Plugin
 Revslider : Slider Revolution is an all-purpose slide display solution that has highly
customizable transitions, effects and custom animations
 Simple Photo Gallery – If you are looking for an effective, reliable, yet simple to use
photo gallery plugin, then check this gallery plugin out. I use it whenever I need a
photo gallery plugin.
 NextGen Gallery – The most popular WordPress gallery plugin and one of the most
popular Plugins of all time.
E-commerce, PayPal Donation and Payment
 Woocommerce - Woocommerce is a powerful, extendable ecommerce plugin that
helps you sell anything. Beautifully.
 WordPress Simple PayPal Shopping Cart – is a very easy to use plugin that allows you
to sell products or services online in one click from your WordPress blog. Very useful

3. when you want to sell eBooks or digital products from various posts and pages and
need a WordPress Shopping Cart solution.
 WP Easy PayPal Payment Accept – This is a very easy to use WordPress plugin to
Accept donation or PayPal payment for a service or a product in one click. Handy
when you are trying to put a customized payment widget on your site (you can add it
to the sidebar or a page or a post of your blog).
 WordPress eStore – This plugin provides a complete solution to sell products from
your site. It is really good for selling digital products securely from your WordPress
blog.
 WordPress Donations Widget Plugin – The WordPress Donations Widget Plugin
allows you to collect donation for a cause from your WordPress powered site.
 PayPal for Digital Goods – This plugin allows you to use the PayPal for Digital Goods
gateway to accept payment for digital goods. Provides inline checkout of digital
goods.
Affiliate Related
 WP Affiliate Platform – WordPress plugin for affiliate recruitment, management and
tracking. This plugin lets you run your own affiliate campaign/program and allows
you to reward (pay commission) your affiliates for referred sales.
 WordPress Affiliate Link Manager – Allows you to automatically convert specific
keywords from your blog posts and pages into your affiliate links. It also cloaks the
affiliate links and gives it a prettier and shorter alias (good for affiliate marketers).