WordPress (Photo credit: Adriano Gasparri)

Fortunately for me, WordPress has a lot of really cool plugins—but that wasn’t always the case. These days I can add in event tickets, membership systems, even community builders that mimic Facebook, all for free or a nominal cost.

But blogging is still the main purpose of WordPress, so the average user can get online quickly and easily. Gotta love that!

Here are a few plugins I’ve found incredibly useful not only for myself but clients too:

Tweet old post: This one actually has tripled traffic to Thriftista at times, revitalizing old posts that might have languished in the archives. The newest version also has the ability to omit posts, which comes in handy when you want to leave out outdated ones.

PhotoDropper: Finding decent, relevant photography can be a pain for the average blog—this plugin takes care of that, and the copyright. Search Flickr for Creative Commons images [ie, you can use them with proper credit] and it even fills in the byline for you. Timesaver!

Image via CrunchBase

Zemanta: This takes PhotoDropper to the next level. As in, completely obliterates my previously awesome find. Meant more for deeper research, Zemanta shares relevant photos [and adds them in with links & attribution!] and will link to what it thinks are relevant external websites — always useful for getting inbound links. You control all of this, so if something seems wrong or you have favorite sources you often refer to, you can easily change it with

a click or two. My new favorite, and it works for Joomla, Drupal and most browsers, to boot.

Yoast SEO: I’ve tried a number of SEO plugins and this one is simple, yet offers more tools for the advanced.

Image via CrunchBase

Feedburner: It’s so easy to just throw out an RSS feed and… yeah. You don’t necessarily know who’s subscribed or have any options to share it with a wider audience. FeedBurner is an old tool but so, so useful. Add a signup form to your blog, track users, add sharing buttons, upgrade to paid versions for even more tools.

Akismet: This is a WordPress standard, and so many folks just don’t enable it. If you want to avoid the majority of spam comments, it’s an easy way to clear it out. It’s also free, though you need to go to the Akismet site to get an API key.

WordPress Editorial Calendar: We all say we’re gonna get out a post a week. Or two. And then six months go by, work gets crazy, you name it. This has an easy drag-and-drop interface to move schedule dates and set up reminders for future posts.

Anthologize: Is your blog ebook-worthy? Even if it’s not *grin*, you can easily export your posts to a readable format.

What are your favorites?