Also known as extensions, are used to extend Wordpress functionality and give your site more oomph. In this article, I will list a few basic plugins that will improve your Wordpress in, well, basic ways.

First up is the Bad Behaviour plugin by Michael Hampton, which blocks automated spam. It is at heart an anti-spam program that uses a different method of tackling the problem, which is to scrutinise the messenger and delivery method of a message, instead of looking at the message itself. Interestingly, almost all comment spam are delivered by automated bots; so if you use this plugin, you would be virtually free from comment spam!

Have you ever gotten frustrated that the search capability of your WP is limited to the boundaries of your articles? Download the Search Everything plugin! Dan Cameron and other contributors have come up with a plugin that extends WP’ search capability to pages, tags, excerpts, comments, etc. Best of all, you can adjust the defaults and get a tailored search, just by clicking a few check boxes.

Do you have a lot of images on your site? Shutter Reloaded is a plug-in that uses the Lightbox effect – a script that is used to overlay images (images, etc) on the existing page – for your images and picture galleries. Shutter is unique because it doesn’t use an external JavaScript framework (MooTools, Prototype), and therefore is very light – read: fast!

Imagine if you’re at a certain page, say a page on gardening and would like to read other similar pages. Instead of having to exit that page and Google ‘gardening’, you could actually use Similar Posts, a plug-in by Rob Marsh, SJ, which is a list that displays similar posts and/or pages. ‘How?’ you may ask. Answer: It calculates similarity based on a page’s content, title and tags.

Subscribe To Comments is a plugin by Mark Jaquith that allows your commenters to decide if they would like to be notified of new comments on your WP page. When you install this plugin, commenters will see a check box that they can tick if they wish to be notified via email of new comments on the page. Do it; your commenters would be pleased!

Last but not least, backing up your database is extremely important, if a bit of a hassle. Wordpress Database Backup by Austin Matzko, is an automated and on-demand backup program that saves you the hassle of doing it manually all the time, as it’ll send copies of your database to your inbox at regular intervals. However, it must be noted that Database Backup does not save files (pictures, videos, etc), only database (posts, comments, etc).

These basic plugins will make a lot of difference to your Wordpress page, convenience and safety-wise. All of them are plug-and-play, work well with Wordpress 2.7, and most importantly are licensed under the GNU GPL. Oh, and they’re free! What are you waiting for?

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