WordPress is a powerful CMS (Content Management System) and an award winning open source software. Currently, it is the most widely used self-hosted blogger’s platform since its inception in 2003.

The open source community is the main factor in its rapid advancement, making it a powerful tool in online publishing platform.

Programmers, web developers and web designers around the world share their knowledge in order to create a more reliable, better quality platform in order to share their views online and in order, too, for the whole world to benefit from that collaboration.

Web blog started in mid 1990s simply as an online diary. Today it has become a mainstream medium in the internet, equipped with the latest utilities and plugins that advanced technology has to offer.

To date, there are more than eight thousands plugins varying from different categories - from simple comments managements, to spam filter, interactive, to allowing your articles indexed by search engines, to enhancing your sites with photos, avatars, videos and audio and making your website interactive, and a whole lot more.

The top WordPress Plugins for both new and advanced blogger are as follows.

Akistmet - It is a powerful tool to block off spam on your web blog. This will save you time in deleting spam and give you more valuable time to read, edit and update your blog.

Akistmet takes you back late 1990s when the web was not yet spawned by advertisers and spammers. What is best with Akistmet, it is automated, so it cleans your websites with automated spam comments 24/7.

For personal bloggers, Akismet is free although you can donate freely if you want to, but for corporate website or bloggers it costs about $500/mo.

Download Akistmet

WP Database Backup – as the name implies it creates backups of your core database. There are choices to choose from, avail yourself of on-demand or automated word press database backups and save it to your computer, email or better yet on your server.

It is reliable and you should not worry if ever your blog is infected with malicious virus or gets hacked.

Download WP Database

WP Super Cache - the module speeds up your WordPress blog with great speed when accessing your blogs as well navigating within your media driven site. It also prevents crashes when your server experiences technical problems.

Download Super Cache

Google XML Sitemaps Generator - if you want your blog to be optimized by search engines like Google, Yahoo and get your articles indexed successfully, this  increases your articles’ exposure from your blog, therefore it is a must in your list of plugins.

Download XML Sitemaps Generator

Get Recent Comments - This will allow you to display excerpts of the latest comments and that have been posted in your blog.

Download “Get Recent Comments”

WP AJAX Edit Comments - It allows users and web administrators to edit comments on a post inline using AJAX.

Download WP AJAX Edit Comments

Digg This - An excellent way to promote your posts on one of the most popular social bookmarking sites, Digg.com

Feedburner FeedSmith - This plugin forwards all of your feed traffic to web service site and can be accessed so that you can accurately track your subscriber base.

Show Top Commentators - You can improve your blog by encouraging discussion from your readers. The module will help you achieve this by displaying their names and number of comments to your sidebars.

Download Show Top Commentators

Popularity Contest - It tracks down your post and archive views, feedback and gauge which among your post are most popular. This gives you an idea what topic your visitors are most likely interested in.

Download Popularity Contest

Evermore - This new plugin will make for wordpress navigation with more ease. You can also use this to abbreviate all your articles when viewed on multiple post pages. If you plan to expand your post summaries in Wordpress, this can help you greatly.

Download Evermore

Live Comment Preview - If you prefer to watch whose adding comments on your site, this plugin is  an easy way to get comment previews in real time.

Download Live Comment Preview

Photo Dropper – allows you add free photos to your blog posts without leaving Wordpress, making it more impressive and personalized.

Download Photo Dropper

EasyTube – it enables you to embed You Tube videos just by using a simple tag. Blogging has gone a long way when it was used as an online diary. It’s only about a decade when the first blog was published online a decade ago.

Download EasyTube

WP-Email – This makes easier for people to send your WP blog’s articles to his circle of friends. Thus making your articles reach your intended audience and it could lure them to visit your site to check out your recent posts.

Download WP-Email

Theme Test Drive – it allows you to securely test any themes on your bogs as webmaster at the same time your visitors can continue their browsing. The module will  give you greater flexibility before adding any changes or downloading plug ins to your blogs.

Download Theme Test Drive

Admin Drop Down Menu – this eliminates the need for executing a double click action on the Admin screens. You simply point your mouse over the main menu and you will instantly see the second level menu

Download Drop Down Menu

Global Translator – Almost anyone in the world with a computer could read your posts with the help of Global Translator plug-in. It offers translations in multiple languages ranging from Chinese, French, Italian, German, Arabic, among others.

Download Global Translator

Adsense Wordpress Plugin – if you would like to earn an eatra income via blogging, try this plug in. It empowers blog authors to encode their Google Adsense PublisherID and allow ads to be displayed on their own posts in order to generate income.

This simply shows that advertising agencies have already recognized the power of web blogs to maximize their potential audience reach.

Download Adsense Manager

Adsense Deluxe – the open source community collaborate in making plugins more flexible as well as profitable. This module offers advanced options automatic placement of Google AdSense or Yahoo Publisher Network (YPN) ads to your WordPress posts. You can easily change all Adsense advertisements to have a new look across the entire site.

Download Adsense Deluxe

WordPress is open source and infinitely extensible. Therefore it has a lot to offer for self-hosted and corporate hosted web sites in blogosphere.