This wasn’t going to be the subject for my post today, but a series of events have changed my mind. Here they are:

Yesterday on my blog, WPShout I published ‘10 Awesome Things to Do With WordPress’ Custom Fields‘. This morning I awoke to find not a single comment on the post. I was disappointed as the post had taken ages, but I didn’t think much more of it. Until this evening. I wanted to email a friend a link to the post, so I loaded up WPShout, only to find the post wasn’t there! In the admin was only my draft from a couple of days ago. Odd, I thought. I copied and pasted the post from Google Reader and republished the post. And then I realized that a heck of a lot of comments I’d spent yesterday evening replying to had gone, and so had my replies. In other words, my database had reverted to a version a couple of days old. Why? I don’t know (if anyone does have any idea, could you drop me an email?!) at this point.

Of course, at this point you’re (probably not) screaming at your monitor

“just restore the backup you’ve got!… you, you do have a backup, right?!”

Yes. Of course I did. Or so I thought. I’d set up the WordPress Database Backup plugin to email me a backup of the database every 24 hours, and that email automatically got archived. Which meant I didn’t see it hadn’t been sent for a couple of weeks because when moving domains I’d forgotten to reinstall the plugin. Which meant I didn’t have a backup.

Where this post is going is simple – don’t be an idiot like me and only realize your backup doesn’t exist when you actually need it, spend five minutes now installing the plugin I mention above and set it up to email you every day. Just don’t archive the email automatically. WordPress Hacks Top Tip: don’t be an idiot….always have a backup.

When it comes to WordPress, there are many things that separate it from the competition. My personal favorite, though, is the WordPress community, which has contributed all sorts of Wordpress plugins to anyone using the WordPress software. These are available for free without any obligation.

Many plugins are situational, either for certain types of blogs, or for certain particular functions, and probably don’t have a place on every WordPress blog. There are a few, however, that every WordPress blog should be using in some form.

Here is my list of the top plugins all WordPress blogs should be using, in no particular order:

• Related Posts – Arguably the most important plugin Wordpress has to offer. This plugin shows a designated number of related entries below your post (or wherever you want to place it). This is ideal for anyone, but especially for those that get a lot of search engine traffic. It goes a long way to keep web surfers on your site.
• Add Related Posts to Your Feed – Adds the above mentioned Related Posts to your feed (requires the Related Posts or Ultimate Tagging Warrior plugin(s) to be installed in order to work).
• All-in-One SEO Pack – This is the ultimate SEO plugin for optimizing your blog for search engines. It automates the SEO process and gives you control over individual title, tags, and description information.
• Permalink Redirect – This plugin does a permanent 301 redirect. This will ensure that search engines don’t penalize you for duplicate posts when they index your site (with and without the www, as well as posts that don’t include the trailing /). This plugin now also redirects your site’s default feed to your Feedburner feed and allows you to set up custom redirects.
• WP-Contact Form – Many e-mail spammers search the web looking for e-mail addresses to use for spam purposes. Having your e-mail address available on somewhere on your website (including in the code somewhere) makes you vulnerable to these people. This plugin creates a contact form that people can use to contact you, so your e-mail address is not displayed. It also includes spam protection and some other optional features.
• WP-DB Manager – This plugin gives you full control of your database, including how to back it up, restore it, and deleting tables when necessary. If this plugin proves to be to advanced, the alternative is WordPress Database Backup, which allows you to backup your database, but doesn’t make it easy to restore it if something comes up.
• Google Sitemaps – Generates an XML-Sitemap file of your website that Google, Yahoo!, and MSN will use to index your blog. This ensures Google is aware of all of your new posts, as well as any updates you’ve made to posts that were previously indexed and need to be updated.
• Akismet – This plugin comes by default with all current Wordpress installations, but requires activation. You can obtain a free key to activate it. It will catch most spam and place it in a approval queue so you can view it before it is posted on to your website.
• Bad Behavior – Prevents known spam bots from accessing your website and is compatible with Akismet (mentioned above).
• Gamer’s Pack – As video game technology continues to increase, this plugin will be more and more important. This plugin that makes your website easily viewable on the Nintendo Wii, Nintendo DS, and Sony PSP gaming systems. I’ve also found it helps people trying to view your website on a cellular phone.

So, there is my list. 10 plugins that I feel all Wordpress users should use regardless of what type of blog they are running. I intentionally did not include any plugins that use comments, as many blogs do not accept comments, making these plugins not needed for them. My goal with this post was to cover only plugins that should be used regardless of the type of blog is being run.

Is there a plugin that you feel should have been included on this list? Let me know in the comments below!