I’ve written several Guidespot guides about Wordpress content management, design, and solutions, and this is the page where you can find all of my current Wordpress loves in one place. As a Wordpress.org user, you can search them by name in your Plugin Installer.

I’m currently running Wordpress 2.9 and all of these plugins are active on this blog.

Wordpress Mobile Edition: A plugin that allows you to make your blog reader-friendly for mobile web devices. Until you try reading someone’s blog on a mobile browser and you have to scroll through every sidebar and header and image before you can even get to a post, you’ll have no idea how much you need this. It’s a quick install, and you can customize colors and appearace right from the “Settings” panel in your Wordpress admin page. This plugin will NOT alter the look of your blog on a regular browser in any way. It detects mobile browsers and only then will it activate – standardizing text sizes and colors, removing or compressing images, all those things that make for a much faster load on something like my Blackberry.

Customizable Search Widget: Any widget-ready blog can use this plugin. It melds with your blog theme and you can customize the buttons and the search box. No blog should be without an internal search function, and this one is stellar. See it over there on the right? Fits right in.

Viper’s Video Quicktags: This is a new favorite, a plugin that makes video embeds a piece of cake. Just intsall it and then choose what video sites you want to support (there are tons, and you can edit them at any time) and then those button will magically appear in the “write” screen just below the other buttons for alignment, photos, etc. You can specify default sizes for each player as well, which is handy.

Share/Save Buttons: An easy plugin to add a slick button at the bottom of every post, with a dropdown of options for readers to tweet, digg, or otherwise love on what you’ve got to say. Very clean-looking, and customizable. Hey look! There’s one at the bottom of THIS PAGE!

WP-EasyArchives: Check out my Archives page to see how this works. It’s a fantastic plugin for people who have been blogging a long time and don’t want to fill up a whole sidebar with months and post counts. I also love how this shows the reader the title of the post, so he or she doesn’t have to bop around trying to remember when it was written.

WP Render Blogroll Links: This is in the same vein as the archives plugin above. You can see it in action on my Blogroll page. It’s another great way to keep your sidebars clean and still give some linky love. The plugin works off your existing link list (the one that’s automatically in Wordpress) and if you update that, it updates the page. No more manually updating a separate page if you don’t use the built-in Links Widget, hooray! It also sorts by category and alphabetizes, which is quite nice.

AddThis Sidebar Widget: Use this plugin to make a quick button widget just like the ones at the top of my left sidebar. You can customize the size and shape of the buttons, and it’s great because your reader can immediately select his or her subscription service right there.

WP-Flickr: Keep your pics on Flickr? When you install this plugin, WP-Flickr creates a box on your post-writing screen where you can just click on a photo from your photostream and drop it right into the post! SO much handier than uploading to your server, and even faster than copying and pasting URLs. If you use Flickr for photos and videos on your site, this is a must-have.

Wordpress Thread Comment: This is the plugin I use that allows nested comment replies on my posts. It has a lot of options the admin can configure, like changing the color of the reply box (mine are darker blue), changing the email notification functions and allowing the administrator to moderate comments on the front end and the admin end of the blog. You can customize it even more with a little code, but you don’t have to. I used to use IntenseDebate and also tried Disqus, but I am really the most pleased with this so far.

WP Page Numbers: This one is a little trickier, but it’s a darned good navigation tool. See how the bottom of my main pages have nice little numbers on them, instead of that old “prev” and “next” they used to have? That’s from this baby. It took a little code manipulation – really just some cut-and-paste – to get it activated. The plugin management page has all the instructions right there for you. Once it’s on, you can choose from several different color and style options to get a look to match your blog.

WP to Twitter: This is an easy one. It allows you to push your post right to a Tweet! You can customize the way you want it to read (Just Posted, or Just Blogged, or whatever, include or not include title, full or reduced URL, etc.) and when the post goes up, so does your Tweet.

For more information on getting started with Wordpress.org Content Management, check out my Guidespot series (link in left sidebar) and my old faithful, Wordpress for Dummies.