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Back in December, I had just moved this blog to being a self hosted site. I posted my favorite plug-ins at the time. Looking back, its funny how I only use one of those now. Though all of those did have good points, I found others that I like more or decided not to use that type of plug in anymore. Today I am going to give you my new favorite plug-ins for word press!

1. afterRead – This nifty plug in allows you to put a call to action after every post. I use it to shamelessly ask for donations at the end of single posts, which you can see below. I could think of several ways you could use it, including to add an additional reminder to subscribe to RSS or email subscriptions!
2. Broken Link Checker – This one does just what it says! It checks EVERY link in your blog to be sure it still works properly. I have over a thousand links my my blogs and pages, according to this plug in. Checking these by had would be an awfully boring and time consuming task. With this plug in running, I can be assured that my links work so my readers don’t get the ugly 404 page that makes me crazy when I’ve clicked a link from a source I like.
3. CommentLuv – This plug in adds the ability for your commenters to have a link to there last blog added to the bottom of the comment they leave. I find this to be so cool when I see it on other sites, so I grabbed the plug in for myself. Another great feature is that, if you register, you can pick between your last 10 posts when you leave a comment. I find this second feature makes me happy to not be spamming the same link over and over when I am replying to replies to comments I have left, etc.
4. FT FacePress II – This plug in cross posts your new content to the Facebook pages and profiles you specify. Pretty nifty, I think!
5. Hungred Feature Post List – I used to use a different method to keep my favorite and best posts in a side bar widget, but I couldn’t remember what I was using after I had to rebuild this blog from scratch. After trying several different plug ins, I found this one to work the best for me. It adds a section in the editing page where you can mark each post as featured or not. After that, just add the widget to your side bar and your done!
6. Post-Page Association- I use this to make my LDR Survival page. You just install this post and make a page. You can then use the drop down at the bottom of the editor to select the category you want to be associated with that page and how many posts you want displayed. Some themes don’t support this, so you may have to set things as outlined in the page linked above to get it working right. ( I had to do that myself, but its easy peasy!)
7. Snazzy Archives – For an set and forget it plug in, this one is the awesome sauce! I love the way it makes your archives look good…with very little effort on your part. You can see it in action on my Archives page as well as on the plug-ins website.
8. Translate This Button – After using many other plug ins to try to give my readers the ability to translate my blogs into their native language, I finally found  my solution in this plug in. You can set which languages show up on the initial drop down and the reader has the option to click to see all the languages if theirs does not show initially. The set up is a breeze and putting it on your site is as simple as dragging a widget to the position you want it to show up in.
9. What Would Seth Godin Do – I was reading Tony Teegarden’s Blog and noticed there was a greeting that welcomed me back! Whoa, was that cool! This plug in is his secret to changing the welcome message at the bottom of his posts. It works with cookies, so if you readers clean out there cashes or don’t enable cookies…they will always get the newbie welcome. However, those that do use cookies get a welcome back after a number of visits (which you can specify on the settings page).
10. WP-SpamFree – I’ve always had Akismet installed and active, but I had to confirm each one as spam with my settings. Plus I had one or two slip through the filters. I added this little plug in, and I have not seen a single spammy comment since. I HIGHLY recommend this one.
11. Genki Announcement – This plug in is awesome for putting an announcement either before the first post of a page or in a side bar via a widget. You can set one message for all users, or different messages depending on the user type. I can see how this would be great for multi-author blogs in setting an announcement reminder of whatever the main admin wanted. You can also have the announcement turn its self off at a specific day and time OR leave it until you manually go disable it.
12. ICS Calendar – This plug in pulls in and combines as many ICAL feeds as you want so you may post them on a page to let your readers know what you have going on during your days. There are MANY Calendars that offer public ICAL feeds, and this was the best solution I have found to integrate my Google Calendar into my Calendar page (This Page No Long Exists). (Some day I WILL have something more interesting than my class schedule there… I will, I will, I will. LOL)

So there are MY favorite 12 Word Press Plug Ins. What ones did I leave out that you think are absolutely awesome (I deliberately left out things like sitemaps, blog statistics and back up)? Which ones to you think are absolute rubbish? Do you have a better plug in that will replace it? Share your answers to these questions in the comments below. I look forward to seeing your options and possibly finding even better solutions than I have now!

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