A few friends asked me as to what Plugins I was using in my blog. I of course shared my small but excellent and must-have list with them and thought “why not do the same with you, my readers”? Well, here goes my gems in alphabetical order.

1. Ad Rotator: The banner you see on the top right of the blog is run by a Plugin called Ad Rotator. Ad Rotator is a plugin that does just that; rotates ads randomly. It uses a text file and a php call function to load ads randomly. Go ahead and refresh the page. You will see what I mean. You get this plugin here.

2. Adsense Revenue Sharing: This is a new plugin developed by my friend and Brother Andrei. Oh well, not a blood brother, but he is a lot more than that to me. If you run a blog with multiple authors and want to share Adsense revenue with them as a reward, then you will love this. This plugin doesn’t even require you to edit your template or place ads manually. It does the job automatically based on your settings in the admin panel. Pretty impressive work. Go here to download the plugin.

3. Akismet: This one doesn’t need a big explanation. It is a built-in anti-spam plugin. Activate it, go to Wordpress.com, signup and get an API key, validate it in the Akismet config page in your admin panel and you are all set.

4. aLinks: If you blog is about Internet Marketing or if you are selling popular products as an affiliate, you need this plugin. I am amazed at why this plugin hasn’t become the talk of the town. In my opinion, it really is under utilized. I can actually write a separate article on the benefits of this plugin, but for now, in the words of the author “it is a WordPress plugin that automatically links keywords in your blog post”. Say, you are selling Product A and you want your link to appear automatically in your posts whenever you mention it. All you have to do is, configure aLinks with the name Product A and the link to it. Job done. Get it here.

5. All in One SEO: This is a must have in my opinion. Once activated, it enables certain fields in the post area for you to fill, like Meta Descriptions, Keywords, Title name, etc. It helps Search Engines like Google and Yahoo to locate your posts better and serve them in searches. It is available here.

6. Challenge: Did you pass Math? Ouch! An insulting question indeed. The spammers have forced us publishers to ask such questions to our readers so that only legitimate and “intelligent” people can take part in discussions. Spammers are obviously morons. No doubt about it. Very useful plugin. Download it here.

7. Feedburner Feedsmith: A plugin owned by Feedburner that helps your redirect all your feed subscription to one place. Install, activate, plugin in your feed URL and it will make sure you lose none of your subscriptions. Try it out. Click on the subscribe in email link on the right. Ah, how about subscribing to my feed? Thank you. Go here to download the plugin.

8. Google Analytics: This is a plugin that is made for programming illiterates like me. You are a blogger, and if you are like me or others, you treat it as a passion. You definitely want to know the growth of your passion to the minute detail. Google Analytics can help you with all the statistics you want in the world for your blog. But then, what about inserting the code in each page of your blog? Well, that is where this plugin comes in handy. Install it, activate it, go to Options – Google Analytics, put in the code provided by Google once and save it. The plugin will add the code to every page in your blog as they are created, giving you an accurate picture of your visitor statistics.

If you are new to this, go to analytics.google.com, signup for an account, and then download this plugin here.

There you go. 8 popular plugins I love and you really should too. Aww, looking back at the post, am I swearing by Google? It seems I am. Hero Worship. Definitely not good.