It would be impossible to put together a “Top Ten WordPress Plugin” list because every site has different needs and there is a plugin for every need. Almost anyway. However there are plugins you find yourself turning to time and time again, and while that list is an organic, changing beast, here is mine in it’s current incarnation.

1. Headspace 2 – some time back I tried out all the major players in the SEO plugin field and this one came out ahead. There may be newer plugins to rival it, but I haven’t come across a plugin that can rival the level of control in Headspace. What do you use?
2. Gravity Forms / CForms II – If you are fussy about your forms, and particularly if you have any need for complex forms, you need one of these babies. Gravity forms is not free, but is well worth the price for its ease of use. The one criticism I have of Gravity forms is the lack of any anti spam measure other than captcha. I do like the Q&A antispam option in CForms, and it’s free, but it’s not as easy to use.
3. NextGen Gallery & Lightbox Plus – I’ve coupled two different plugins here, pretty much any blog should use Lightbox Plus, it does very cool image overlays and allows you to create your own templates for how the overlays look. If your blog includes image galleries of any kind, NextGen Gallery gives you excelllent control over Galleries and how to present them – plus there are many wonderful plugins that complement NextGen such as GalleryView for example. Ok, so I crammed three in here, but they can all be used together for better image presentation.
4. Email Immunizer – protect your email addresses with this handy little plugin: it will replace any email addresses in posts & pages with obfuscated versions.
5. WP Super Cache /W3 Total Cache – a caching plugin is a must, for several reasons but one good one being speed. Caching can have a huge impact on the responsiveness of your site. I use both of these plugins (on different blogs) and I can recommend them both.
6. Efficient Related Posts – display a list of related blog posts based on tags.
7. Maintenance Mode – for taking your site offline while you work on it so that people don’t see broken pages, half finished templates and so on.
8. PageMash - if you are using list pages in your theme this plugin allows you to reorder and hide pages. If you’ve ever struggled with going through every page in your site changing the pageorder number, this is for you.
9. Custom Field Template – custom fields allow you to push WordPress a little further in terms of functionality, they are incredibly powerful but they’re ugly. This plugin prettifies the interface for Custom Fields, so that it’s a lot easier to add fields to a page or post.
10. Subscribe to Comments – blogs that don’t have an email subscribe feature bug me because I have to remember to go back and check for responses. Except I never remember. This plugin helps keep the conversation going on your posts with comments.

I left my own plugins out of the top ten, however on almost every implementation I include Remove Link to Current Page, so I’m giving it an honourable mention here. I also often use a navigation plugin John Blackbourn developed for me, but it’s not publicly available yet – watch this space :)

What plugins are making you cups of coffee?

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Dark Night Of The Soul is an album by Danger Mouse and Sparklehorse (who passed away before the album was released). The album has a host of guest appearances: The Flaming Lips, Gruff Rhys, Jason Lytle, Julian Casablancas, Black Francis, Iggy Pop,  James Mercer, Nina Persson, Suzanne Vega, Vic Chesnutt and… David Lynch.

Hipstamatic (an iPhone vintage camera app) have organised a competition, the idea is to listen to a track from the album, one David Lynch collaborated on, and create a visual interpretation of the song.

If you want to check out all the entries you can go here, there are some great shots in the competition, one that really caught my eye is by filmbearsleeps, you can vote for her entry too, I won’t be cross – hell, I voted for her entry myself :)

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Organico got in touch with me to come up with a design to go on the 100% organic Fairtrade certified cotton cloth bags they wanted to make available in the shop.

I spent ages contemplating insanely complex designs in my head, trying to encapsulate Bantry and the shop and the ethos behind the shop and the nature of the staff, the great atmosphere in the cafe, and about a gazillion other things.

I sketched out some ideas, none of which worked, I scribbled mind maps to try and clarify my thoughts on the major items that needed to be hit. And then I gave up.

A couple of days later, I steeled my myself for a marathon session and told myself I would not leave the desk until I had a usable concept. I looked over my notes, and with all these ideas whizzing around my head I sat down and without even thinking it just appeared on the paper.

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I looked at it as though someone else had scribbled it down, and straight away I knew that was it. “A Lot of Heart”. It captured the love for the business that all the staff at Organico have, it captured the will to succeed, the caring nature of the staff toward the customers, and of course Bantry is the heart of West Cork.

My logo looks pretty snazzy on the new aprons too, if I do say so myself :)