Top 5 Wordpress Plugins to Enhance Your Blog

Being the most popular blogging software in the blogosphere, Wordpress (WP) has hundreds of free plugins in the web that were developed to improve the blogging experience.  With the extent of the choice, I believe it is necessary to round them down to the favored few.  Among the hundreds available, it is inevitable the there are just as many that are useless or don’t deliver what they promise.

I will narrow down the list to those plugins that are not very popular but have given blogs better value and functionality.  Come to think of it, every great WP plugin out there did start out this way.  So, I will give you a rundown of those that are still unnoticed but will someday become a regular mainstay in every WP blog like Akismet, WP-Cache, Wordpress Stats, WP-DatabaseBackup, WP-Notable, or Share This.  For WP newbies, if you don’t have any of the plugins I just mentioned, go get ‘em.  A WP blog just isn’t at its optimum without these.

Now, here are the top Wordpress plugins I found that will enhance the value of any blog and make your blogging experience one for the books.

1. Digital Fingerprint – This WP plugin allows the author to embed a personalized fingerprint to identify ownership in his post.  At present, the blogosphere is flooded with spam blogs (splogs), blogs created solely for the purpose of indexing new blogs in search engines or to increase the ranking of affiliate sites.  These splogs utilize automated programs to scour the web and copy articles from other blogs.  Your digital fingerprint is not visible on the post itself, but only on RSS feeds.  You will be able to track down any duplication of your post by entering the fingerprint in blog search engines and identify those that are not posted in your own blog.

2. Wordpress Mobile Edition – This will display an interface that can be viewed on mobile devices once a reader visits your blog through this medium.  With the popularity of smartphones and PDAs, it will be a useful plugin as it allows visitors to continue viewing your site even on the go.

3. Twitter Updater – Considering the current fame of Twitter on the web and on mobile devices, it has now become the most preferred tool used by bloggers to reach more audience through this social network.  This plugin automatically broadcasts posts to your Twitter account upon publication.  No need to manually tweet new posts to update your friends and followers.

4. Yet Another Related Posts Plugin (YARP) – There are several WP plugins that show related entries on your blog at the end of every post.  These give readers a chance to stay longer on your site and browse other similar posts.  This one is considered one of the better plugins of this type because it includes related posts for your feed.

5. Clean Archives – This is a great plugin, especially for older blogs who have accumulated a large amount of posts over the years. Instead of having an archive section on your sidebar which takes a lot of space over time, this plugin automatically updates your archives on a separate page arranged per month with post titles included.  This not only allows your readers a complete easy access to all your posts, it also makes it easier for the blogger to sift through older posts if necessary.

There are still numerous plugins out there that can extend your blog’s functionality, appearance, and interface.  Meanwhile, these are the basics if you want a powerhouse blog that isn’t cluttered by too many extensions or plugins.  And what I really love about Wordpress is that it has created a community of bloggers and developers who share each other’s talents without need of any form of compensation.  Donations are freely given and openly accepted without any prejudice whatsover.  If only this type of community exists in the non-virtual world, I doubt we would be having the global economic crisis we are facing now.