This is my list with the most essential wordpress CMS plug-ins. In order to find and install these plugins, you can directly search them in WordPress plugin search engine. If I missed something please drop me a line to update the post.

Security:

1. UPDATE (26/12/2014) iThemes security (malware scanning via virus total, wp-admin url hiding and many more)
2. botnet attack blocker (blocks distributed botnet brute-force attacks on your WordPress installation)
3. captcha (bestwebsoft)
4. Acunetix WP Security
5. members (or wp-members as an alternative)

Logging:

1. Email Log (log all emails WordPress sends)
2. wp-activity (log members activity, Track login attempts and block them by ip address) UPDATE(28/9/2014):This plugin is obsolete. If you run PHP>5.4 you should use Plainview Activity Monitor.

Spam:

1. akismet (Takes care of spam comments – You don’t need to download/install it as it comes with wordpress preinstalled)

Performance:

1. WP Super Cache (the best plugin for caching I’ve ever used)
2. Regenerate Thumbnails (Allows you to regenerate your thumbnails after changing the thumbnail sizes)
3. WP Smush.it

SEO:

1. [UPDATE:] WordPress SEO by Yoast (don’t need to say a thing, install it.)
2. Broken Link Checker (checks posts, comments, pages for missing links and notify you by email)
3. Meta Keywords & Description (define meta in html head)
4. Simple Google Analytics
5. Google XML Sitemaps

Backup:

1. BackWPup (best backup tool I’ve ever used for wordpress)

Eshop – Monetize:

1. WooCommerce (Excellent free eshop with good integration and plugins for extended features. Supports virtual items, Downloadable items with limiting if desired, custom fields etc.  )
2. Flattr (This plugin allows you to easily add a Flattr donation buttons to your blog and blog posts, plz read what flattr is)

Other:

1. Conditional Widgets (allows users to choose which pages and/or categories the widget is either displayed)
2. Organize Series (It helps make it easier for readers of your blog to discover all the series you’ve written and also to easily find post that are part of the same series.)
3. List category posts ( list posts from a category into a post/page using a shortcode)
4. ELI’s Related Posts Footer Links and Widget (Display a linked list of related Posts by Tags or Categories. Footer and Widget)
5. SyntaxHighlighter Evolved ( Easily post syntax-highlighted code to your site without having to modify the code at all)

As I said above… Updates are welcome.

Thnx 4 reading,

@SpecKtator_