A friend asked me what WordPress Plugin I use in a typical install. For your enjoyment:
Feedburner Plugin
Feedburner Feed Replacement which forwards all feed traffic to your Feedburner feed without the need to mess with your .htaccess file.
Google Sitemaps
Now that Yahoo and MSN have agreed to start using the XML-based sitemap structure implemented by Google, most sites will benefit from creating a Sitemap file.
WordPress Database Backup
Included in the default installation of 2.x and up. Backup, Backup, Backup. I run nightly backups of all the WordPress-based sites I’m involved with and dump them to a dedicated gmail account.
Optimal Title
If you have any interest in getting traffic to your site from search engines, use Optimal Title. Google has a nasty habit of dropping pages from a basic WordPress installation into their supplemental index because of the way WordPress titles pages. Using Optimal Title to list the entry title followed by the blog name is one way to avoid the supplemental mess.
Spam Karma 2
There are Akismet fans and Spam Karma fans. Spam Karma is more than adequate for the sites I’m involved with. Akismet is included by default and the ultra-paranoid will have no problems running both together.
Statcounter for WordPress
Statcounter for WP drops the Statcounter tracking code in the footer of all pages in your site. Best of all, it is a text box-based append so you could also use this to add whatever tracking program you use – not just Statcounter.
Related Entries
Related Entries encourages stickiness by adding related links to previous entries in your posts.
Ultimate Tag Warrior
UTW is the “multi-headed hydra of a plugin.” Tags have become ever so popular and with UTW you can tag your entries, keep things organized, or include the AJAXy search box which is also included.
There are few others I use a on regular basis, but the above represent my most often used. Your mileage may vary.