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I’ll be lurking in the #blogchat discussion tonight on #twitter and the topic of discussion is “favorite blog plugins”. After thinking about it for a few minutes, I realized it’s hard to identify my favorite plugins–I use a lot of different plugins on different sites depending on a lot of variables. However, in the spirit of sharing, here are some of my favorites/most used blog (WordPress) plugins — in no particular order:

- Akismet: What WordPress user wouldn’t list this among their favorites? Just look in the sidebar on this site to see the number of spam comments it has protected this site from–and compared to a lot of sites, I don’t really attract that many spammers. This is one of those plugins you just install, configure, and forget…it just does its job. So although I don’t think about it a lot, it is a great, free plugin and deserves recognition for doing what it does, very well.

- WP Touch: This is a great plugin that makes creating a mobile version of your WordPress blog very easy–and the free version does have a lot of features. I’m using the free version of this plugin on this site–check it out on your smartphone. I like this plugin so much, it is the only plugin where I have actually purchased the Pro version for use on another client site.

- Tweet Old Post: Okay, I know the true Twitter evangelists out there may cringe at this one–how dare I install something that will “auto post” to my Twitter account. Well, get over it, because I do…on more than one Twitter account…and I love it Great little plugin…if you haven’t checked it out, take a look.

- Blackbird Pie: A cool little plugin that I don’t use a great deal, but provides a nice way to insert tweets directly into my blog posts. The plugin adds an icon to your WordPress visual editor and all you need do is retrieve the twitter url or id and use the icon on the editor to add it directly to you post…see and example below:

MT @MackCollier: Tonight at #Blogchat 9 ET we'll be discussing favorite blog plugins. Here are mine: http://t.co/AotvT3fj

February 19, 2012 7:32 pm via TweetDeckReplyRetweetFavorite

@LisaPetrilli

Lisa Petrilli

Those are just a few plugins I use and like….I use dozens of others I like just as much, but will save those to share at another time.