That’s a pretty open ended question!
Here are a few I recommend, some of which I’ve been involved in:
1) All in one SEO pack — helps make title tags more attractive for search engines
2) WordTwit – pushes new post information out to Twitter automatically
3) FlickrRSS – Imports a few photos from your Flickr stream (if you use that)
4) WPtouch – Implements a custom theme for iPhone users on your site
5) WPcache – Helps reduce load and improve responsiveness of your WP sites
Yes, I know it is an open-ended question, but as there are thousands of plugins, how else is one to find the best ones? I really would like to see more dialog on this. At present, I usually check out the “most popular” plugins, but that method excludes the newest ones, perhaps some real gems…
I think the best way to find plugins is to google the features that you want – for example, I have a CMS comprised of pages, and have found – “Child of Page Excerpts” and Advanced Excerpts, and Thumbnails for excerpts, and featured content, and search, sociable, and wordbook for networking. 🙂
Asking what the best plugins are is like asking what restaurant is best – it depends on what your looking for.
Well, I’ve actually done that, e.g. “What wine goes best with this steak dinner?” If someone wanted a good “similar” or “related” post plugin, which would you recommend? That’s what I’m thinking about. There are several that do it, but which is the most functional?
I recommend linkwithin. http://linkwithin.com
I think this is a very good question although quite far reaching.
There are loads of plugins out there but how many are actually any good or don’t quite match up to expectations?
Of course it depends on what you’re looking for but even so I think most people are looking for features that hopefully one day will be “core”.
So maybe I could ask which core plugins are the best?
I am using WordPress as a CMS so I have added section navigation, breadcrumb navigation and a download manager. These I see as essential.
