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Lately I’ve found some really helpful Wordpress plugins, so I thought I would post some of the ones I use (or have used) on some of my sites, in case you’re due for an “I could use that!” moment.

Blog Metrics - gives some interesting stats and measures “success” of your blog, based on comments.  I’m still new to this one, but so far it looks pretty cool.

Dean’s Permalinks Migration - I used to have this blog on an IIS server, which required that all my permalinks had “/index.php/” in them.  When I moved to Apache, I was able to start using nicer permalinks.  This plugin does a permanent redirect from the old structure to the new one so that users can find you and so that search engines don’t lose you.

Google Analytics - For the stats addicts out there, this puts your Google Analytics script code on every page.  Works flawlessly.  Oh, and it is smart enough to not include the code if you’re the blog admin and are logged in.

Google XML Sitemaps - Generates and keeps current XML sitemaps for your posts and pages.  If you don’t know what sitemaps are, you probably don’t need this plugin.

iWPhone - Very cool plugin.  You activate it and install a non-active theme, and it formats your WordPress site nicely for an iPhone user.  Because you know you want to read my blog while you wait in line at Wal-Mart.  To see it in action, visit my site with an iPhone.

Ozh’ Better Feed - I’m still testing this one, but so far it looks pretty cool.  It lets you add anything you want to the bottom of your posts in the RSS feed.  This is for those RSS fans that follow you.  Include copyright info, links to comments, a ShareThis link, etc. that will show up in their readers.

ShareThis - This is the best plugin I’ve come across in a while.  Alex at Crowd Favorite is behind this one, and it’s absolutely brilliant.  It lets users easily add your post to social bookmark sites.  See the “ShareThis” link below to see it in action.

Spam Karma 2 - It’s got its quirks, but it’s a great anti-spam comment filter.

Static Front Page - This plugin makes the blog home page be something other than the latest blog posts.  I’ve used it in places where I use WordPress more for content management than for blogging.  It works well and is a pretty cool idea.  The link I have for this one is gone…it appears that Opt-In Front Page has replaced this one (but I’ve not yet tried that plugin).

Subscribe Me - Makes it easy for your visitors to add your RSS feed to their readers.  See the nifty orange dropdown box in the upper left corner of my site.  You can make it a dropdown list or a list of the individual icons.  I prefer dropdown, but the other way works well, too.

What Would Seth Godin Do? - I love the name.  Basically it’s a way to treat new visitors and returning visitors differently by using cookies.  For example, on this blog new users are invited to subscribe to the RSS feed and returning users don’t see anything.  I could include a “welcome back” message, but I chose not to.

That’s my list of preferred plugins.  Which ones do you use?  I’m always looking for new cool things to do here.

Update: Ozh mentioned his Admin Drop Down Menu Plugin in the comments, and I wanted to make sure it got proper notice here.  Wow.  That one is very cool.  How did I live without it for so long?