WordPress is one of the most user-friendly, powerful blogging platforms. It has wide variety of features that simply said, you can modify your blog into a site for almost any purpose. One of WordPress features that guarantees this great usability is plugin. It allows your WordPress site to perform or display specific functions. Here are 5 most basic WordPress plugins you definitely must activate to greatly enhance your WordPress site.

Akismet
It is in fact the first plugin you should activate. It prevents your WordPress site from spam comments and saves hours of moderating them.

Post-Plugin Library
It does nothing actually, yet it is so essential since it provides common code for Similar Posts, Recent Posts, Random Posts and Recent Comments plugins.

WordPress Database Backup
Install and activate this plugin to reduce the possibility of losing your content. It automatically backs up all of your database information and send them to you via e-mail each specified day or week.

Broken Link Checker
Checking broken links is painfree with this plugin. It checks images and links; if they are broken, it will notify you via Dashboard.

Subscribe to Comments
It is a plugin you can use to get an RSS feed for each post’s comments.

Use these basic plugins to get the most out of your WordPress. Explore other available plugins as well to keep your WordPress site an astounding one.

All in One SEO Pack
A great SEO plugin, it gives each post its own title, keyword and description. If you want your blog to be easily recognized by the search engines’ spiders, this plugin is a must-have.

RSS Footer
Very useful to prevent sploggers of not linking back to the original article, this plugin allows you to add a line of content to the end of your RSS feed articles.

Google (XML) Sitemaps
It helps Google recognize every post and page on your WordPress site, so make sure you activate it.

Related Posts
This plugin allows your visitors view other published posts related to the post they’ve just read. It may increase your site’s page views and decrease its bounce rate.

Use these basic plugins to get the most out of your WordPress. Explore other available plugins as well to keep your WordPress site an astounding one.

Best thing about WordPress is that it can be modified into almost anything you want. Using plugins, that is. While these plugins are actually basic and simple ones, having them installed and activated can make your WordPress sites cooler than ever.

Contact Form
It is simple, yet you must activate it. It will notify admins, authors and editors of your site if users want to contact them.

AdRotator
It allows you to submit a list of banner or box ads displayed on your WordPress site. Each time a new page is opened or the same page is refreshed, a new Ad appears in specific spot. It can also be used to display random photos or quotes.

Sociable
It is a very handy plugin that puts links to all popular social networking sites as StumbleUpon and Digg at the end of each post. Your visitors will be able to bookmark posts they’ve read onto those sites.

NextGen Gallery
It is a photo gallery plugin that allows you to insert images in single pieces, slide shows or full blown galleries into posts and pages.

WordPress Mobile Edition
It automatically configures your WordPress site to display an interface designed for a mobile device. It is very useful for visitors coming to your site on a mobile device. And since no configuration is needed, all you have to do is plug and play!

Use these basic plugins to get the most out of your WordPress. Explore other available plugins as well to keep your WordPress site an astounding one.

Facebook is the most popular social networking site today; more than half a million new users register to it everyday. Installing a Facebook plugin to your WordPress site enables your site visitors to easily share the posts. Here are 5 cool Facebook-related WordPress plugins.

Add to Facebook
Once you install this plugin on your WordPress site, you can see a footer link at the bottom of each post. By clicking on this link, user will be asked to sign in to his/her Facebook account and the post will be automatically added to his/her Facebook mini-feed.
You can choose to display either a text link “Share on Facebook” or a Facebook button or both combined at the bottom of each post.

Facebook Dashboard Widget
It is a dashboard widget that allows you to see all of your friends’ Facebook updates, even if the Facebook site is blocked.

Feed Facebook, Leave Facebook
It allows you to post a note in Facebook containing an excerpts of your WordPress post. You can use it to direct your Facebook visitors to your blog; by clicking the “View original post” below the note they will go straight to your WordPress post page.

Facebook CommentsTNG
It pulls comments from imported Facebook notes back to your WordPress site. It displays a manual import button to manually import comments, daily and hourly timers, a limit option to limit how far the plugin goes and an e-mail field to be set if you have a gravatar to use.

Sharecount for Facebook
It displays the number of times the current page has been shared on Facebook. It also allows your WordPress site visitors to share it themselves. It uses awe.sm for tracking and offers Google Analytics integration. No need to have an awe.sm account though.

Mingle is a WordPress plugin, developed by Blair Williams, that allows you to turn your WordPress blog into a social network. It uses a standard WordPress-based site and standard WordPress theme to create profile pages, user friending, progile page posts, profile activities, social comments, e-mail notifications (with privacy settings) and a full directory of members.

Some key features of the plugin:
- User Profile Pages
- User Friending
- User Profile Posting (for friends)
- User Profile Post Commenting (for friends)
- Friend Activity Pages
- Full Member Directory
- Login & Navigation Widget
- Random or Recent Users Widget
- e-Mail Notifications
- User e-Mail Notification Opt-Outs

View Demo | Download

On how to use Mingle, check the tutorial video.

Custom Coming Soon Pages is a WordPress Plugin that allows you to display a customized Coming Soon page or Under Construction page. With this plugin you can perform upgrades, fix bugs or preview your design enhancements without having any visitor view error messages or design changes. You have full control on when they can view pages of your site as you–the admin–do.

Moreover, domain age is a significant metric that is taken by many search engine into account as well as other factors while ranking your site. If you have an unused domain, you can use the Custom Coming Soon Pages plugin on a fresh WordPress site instead of your web host’s landing page. Restrict your host from pointing your domain to an ad-farm when you can make a mark with a Coming Soon page customized to project your brand even before you launch.

The plugin can also display a countdown timer, suitable for a specific-dated launch. You can also let your users subscribe to it that they will be notified via e-mail whenever you launch.

Integrated Twitter and Facebook features let your visitors follow your updates via these social sites till the D-launch-day.

Some key features of the plugin are:

Controlled Access
Those other than the site admins will see the custom Coming Soon page, while the site admins will view the fully functional blog with currently applied theme and active plugins.

Customizable Content
The title of the Coming Soon page is customizable, and so is the message on it.

Customizable Backgrounds
Specify any color for the background or use your own image.

Countdown Timer
If you want to launch the site on a specific date, display a cool countdown timer on your custom Coming Soon page.

Launch Notification
Let your users subscribe to your site and get notified via e-mail about when it is launched.

Social Network Integration
Integrated Twitter and Facebook features allow you to connect with your visitors via these social sites.

Well, what do you think about this WordPress plugin? Wanna give it a shot?

Custom Coming Soon Pages WordPress Plugin is courtesy of CSS Jockey. WP Journey is not related to CSS Jockey. Please contact CSS Jockey if you have any further question or request on the plugin.