There are plenty of Top 5, Top 10, etc. posts out there with great recommendation for the best WordPress plugins however most of them caters to established blogs in mind but what about those who just started out? What’s the point in stuffing your brand new blog with tons of plugins which doesn’t apply to you at the start? You want to add Adsense plugin on a brand new blog with just 10 posts and little over 20-50 traffic to none? Fear not! Here’s my take on the MUST have plugins on a new blog 
1. Akismet
A great plugin that comes with your WordPress installation file with one purpose in mind, to stop those nasty comment spam and spammy trackback pings. Upon activation it requires an API key which you can easy get from signing up with WordPress.com.
2. Feedburner Feedsmith
What it does is forward all your RSS feed subscribers (automagically!) to your Feedburner’s URL, giving you an accurate traffic analysis. It also provide you with a code sniplet where you can place on your front page to encourage subscription by email rather than RSS, brilliant!
3. LinkWithin
I know a lot of web owners recommend Yet Another Related Post Plugin (YARPP), what both of them does is calculate the relevancy of all your posts and recommend your viewers to similar posts that may be of interest to them. The feature which YARPP lack is attaching images to the recommended posts, let’s face it, we’re more enticed by curious images than just plain text sentences.
4. All in One SEO pack
This bad boy will help you optimize your blog, to make it easier for search engine spiders to crawl and “inventory” your blog. It helps with ranking your blog according to your keywords and thus bringing in natural quality viewers.
5. WordPress Database Backup
I have a habit of constantly saving my work (and games!), my fingers will automatically press Alt+F and S on its own, it’s so simple and takes less than 1sec but it could save your entire day of hard work! Same apply to your blog, always make backup copy of your database, a simple screw up is all it takes to make your life a living hell. Trust me, INSTALL IT!
6. cforms II
A robust contact form plugin packed with a lot of features. Extensive feature list so take your time reading, the best part is it comes with CAPTCHA (type of challenge-response test used to determine if the submitter is a bot or human) to stop spammers. If this is too complicated for you then try Contact Form 7 plugin instead.
7. Google XML Sitemaps
This plugin will generate an XML feed for your site which you can then submit to Google Webmasters, it helps with getting your site indexed by the mighty Google search engine.
That’s it, have fun and good luck with your new blog
What’s your MUST have plugins for new blog? Share with us
