WordPress is one of the most popular blogging platforms today, and for good reason.  It’s extremely easy to install and can run on Windows or Apache web servers.  There are also thousands of plugins available to extend it’s functionality.

Plugins are additional pieces of code that are "plugged in" to the WordPress core to extend its capabilities, add new features, or enhance existing features.  There are many extremely useful plugins, which will vary depending on how you intend to use your blog. 

No matter your intended use, however, there are a few plugins that no WordPress installation should be without.  Check out some of our most useful plugins.

WordPress Automatic Upgrade – This plugin allows you to keep your WordPress installation up to date.  Making sure  you have the latest version of WordPress helps keep your blog as secure as possible.  You can choose an automatic upgrade, or you can step through the process step-by-step.  Your databases are backed up during the process as well.

Akismet -  This one actually comes built in with WordPress, but it is an essential plugin nonetheless, that does a great job keeping your blog spam-free.  You will need to get a WordPress API key, which you can get for free by creating an account on WordPress.com

All in One SEO Pack – It doesn’t do much good to create a blog and spend precious time writing great posts if no one knows its there.  Making sure your blog is search engine friendly is a key ingredient to getting visibility.  This plugin makes it easy to customize a number of elements of your blog post.

FeedBurner FeedSmith – FeedBurner is one of the premier services for syndicating your blog, offering RSS feeds and blog management tools.  Incorporating FeedBurner into your WordPress site is a snap with this plugin.

Sociable – If you’ve been around the web for any length of time, you have no doubt seen some of the social media sites like StumbleUpon, Digg, Sphinn, Reddit, etc.  Providing an easy method for your visitors to submit your blog posts to these social media sites helps spread the word about your blog, and helps to bring more traffic to your posts.

WP-Cache – As your site grows in popularity, or if you happen to create a post that generates a lot buzz, you want to make sure people can get to your posts and that your server doesn’t get overwhelmed.  Caching your site helps tremendously and allows your web server to serve a considerably higher amount of page views without getting overwhelmed.

WP Security Scan – Security is always a big concern for any website owner, and WordPress bloggers are no different.  Making sure the key areas of your site are properly secured are just a few clicks away with this plugin.

Everyone has their favorite plugins, and there are literally thousands to choose from.  We’ve discussed some of our most useful plugins.  What are your favorites?