Activate your Akismet plugin – the one that comes with your Wordpress installation.

To Activate – click on the Akismet configuration link under your Plugins menu (WP 2.7) and find out how to get your WordPress.com API Key.

This plugin captures and stows out of sight (and mind) almost every single bit of spam that people without live will try to litter your time with.  My most loved plugin!

Some of the best WordPress plug-ins I’ve checked out are from Lester Chan or GamerZ.

You can visit his website here or check out his plugins at WordPress’s site here.

His installation and usage instructions are always clear, easy to follow and thourough. I’ve never had a problem installing or using one of his plugins. The concepts behind the plugins are well thought out and GamerZ usually includes many ways to tweak the plugins to look the way you want them to. I’ve installed and checked out wp-print, wp-postratings, wp-polls, and wp-email.

Make sure you’ve gone to Permalinks under options and done step 4 of the installation:  You Need To Re-Generate The Permalink (WP-Admin -> Options -> Permalinks -> Update Permalink Structure)

I had installed wp-print (which by the way works really well) on another blog and forgot the step above.  After wasting alot of time I re-read the instructions   and there it was!

I tried most of the video player plugins on the WordPress list and like FLV-Embed the best because all the features work well, it’s quick to install and easy to use and the parameters can all be modified.  There’s no interface so you have to change parameters in the .php file but that’s OK with me.

Plug-in wp-dtree creates nested, drop-down menus. See examples here.

Simple Tags makes managing your tags infinitely easier and more straightforward. It provides a fast way to add tags to all your posts.

Dean’s FCKEditor For Wordpress is very stable and has it all. Add tables, images, format all of the above and more.