Starting today, there is now a Twitter account called SWC_Plugins. The latest development news (a.k.a. svn commit information for those of you in the know) will constantly be available there for your viewing. Work is occurring on both plugins almost daily at the moment, so feel free to start following that account for your latest development news.

For those of you looking for a status update, today I just finished converting Podcasting to an easier to manage, class-based plugin. This update was long over due on my end, and will make development much easier in the future. With the completion of the class conversion, comes a very important fix for those of you having issues adding new files. There is no ETA on the version at the moment, but I promise it’s not far away.

As for Google Analyticator, I’m very well aware that external links are not currently being tracked. This is very high on my list of things to fix. Again, no ETA, but sooner rather than later.

P.S. For the smart ones, yes, there is a big announcement coming for my plugins, as well as my freelance career in general. Stay tuned, this is going to be good!

I hope everyone enjoys Pownce for WordPress. If you happen to need an invite for Pownce to enjoy my plugin, let me know and I’ll be sure to hook you up. Other than that, I’ll be seeing you on Pownce.

Hate the sorting through the hundreds of obvious spam messages Akismet caught just to find that one legitimate comment? Derek Punsalan found a new WordPress plugin which aims to remove the obvious spam comments. I can already see Simple Spam Filter becoming a vital tool in every WordPress user’s anti-spam toolkit.

Do you hate Google Analytics’ interface but don’t have the cash for the superb statistics tracking software Mint? Automattic, WordPress’ parent company, has released the Automattic Stats plugin for self-hosted WordPress blogs. The new plugin brings the power of WordPress.com stats to any WordPress blog. While I’ll be sticking with my trusty Mint, I know quite a few bloggers out there who will benefit from this. Learn more about the technical details of Automattic Stats on Andy Skelton’s blog.

To make partaking in this awe-inspiring search engine even easier, I decided 9rules Search needed a Firefox search plugin. Instead of waiting for someone else to do one, I got on the ball and made one myself. You can download the plugin at Mozilla’s search website. Now great content is only a quick search away.

If you’re new to WordPress, finding the perfect plugin is often a difficult task. Sometimes there are eight plugins that do the same thing, which makes it difficult to find the plugin which works the best. Or, you just simply don’t know that a plugin exists. That’s why I’m here to help.

I’ve been a WordPress user since the 1.0 days. During that time, I’ve seen my share of WordPress plugins. Some have failed, while others have evolved into essential features. From my experience, I hope that when you’re done reading this list, you’ll have some plugins that will not only make your life as blogger easier, but that your visitors will find your site more useful.

10. Permalink Redirect

One of the fatal flaws of WordPress is that URLs with a trailing slash are the same as URLs without. This is bad for your stats since one page can show up under multiple URLs, and it’s also bad for search engines who may duplicate your pages in their results. That’s why there’s Permalink Redirect. Permalink Redirect will issue a 301, permanently moved, redirection to anyone accessing your page via the non-permalink URL. This insures that it won’t happen again, and that your web stats will remain clean.

9. Time Zone

If you run your blog in a time zone that observes Daylight Savings Time, you’ll quickly learn WordPress doesn’t like DST. While Daylight Savings Time only occurs twice a year, it’s still a pain to remember to set your GMT offset when DST takes effect. Time Zone solves this problem of forgetful DST switching. Instead of basing your blog time off of an offset from GMT, Time Zone enables WordPress to use your actual time zone, thus allowing WordPress to observe Daylight Savings Time. A must for any DST-bound blogger.

8. WordPress Database Backup / WP-Cron

Backing up your WordPress database is just as important as backing up your computer. You never know when you’ll do something stupid to your database. Unfortunately backing up a database can be an annoying task. That’s why WordPress Database Backup was created. It allows for one-click backups via download, server directory, or email, all straight from your WordPress administration interface.

Since WordPress 2.0, the WordPress creators have acknowledged that database backup is important, and now include WordPress Database Backup by default. However, you can still make the plugin more useful. WP-Cron, a plugin by the same author, gives WordPress Database Backup a new option, automatic backups. With WP-Cron installed you can schedule backups of your database to be made every 24 hours; perfect if you have a Gmail account just hungry for something to store.

7. Popularity Contest

Wouldn’t it be great to know just how popular your entries are? Popularity Contest does just that. By tracking page views, feed views, comments, and trackbacks, Popularity Contest assigns each post a rating based off of your most popular post. After it has a post rating, you can display the popularity in a number of ways. You can put the percent popularity in each post, display your top X posts somewhere on your site, or just keep the statistics to yourself by viewing the detailed popularity page which is added to your WordPress administration interface. Popularity Contest is perfect for new visitors, helping them get up to speed by viewing what’s popular on your site.

6. Gravatars

One of the most popular ways to identify users on forums is by avatars. The Gravatars plugin brings that same personalization to WordPress comments. By using the power of the Gravatar service, the Gravatars plugin is able to display an avatar next to users’ comments. Many of your visitors probably already have a Gravatar, so why not make your visitors’ comments a little more personal by letting them display it.

5. WP-ContactForm

Don’t want to give away your email but still want your visitors to contact you? An email form added by WP-ContactForm is the perfect solution. Instead of messing around creating one yourself, WP-ContactForm does all the hard work for you, allowing you to just drop a contact form on any post or page throughout your WordPress site. Your visitors will thank you when then realize how easy is to contact you.

4. Subscribe to Comments

Often on blogs, visitors will leave comments on which they want to track. Unfortunately, they often forget to check back, or choose not to because they don’t have an easy way. Subscribe to Comments solves this problem. By placing a checkbox next to your comment form, visitors can easily check that box to receive email updates as comments are added to the post. This not only makes it easier on your visitors to follow conversations, but increases the chances that the visitor will check back on your site. A win-win situation!

3. Related Posts

When a visitor finds your website via a search engine or other website, they’re often there for a reason. They want to find out about a particular topic of interest. Related Posts makes life easier on your visitors by showing them other posts you’ve written on the subject. This greatly increases the chance that a visitor will stick around browsing your blog, and is perfect for existing visitors to find out your past thoughts on a particular subject.

2. Ultimate Tag Warrior

Web 2.0 has brought a lot of interesting ideas to websites, tags being one of them. Ultimate Tag Warrior allows you to starting following the fad and tag your posts. There are a lot of great reason to tag. It helps narrow down what the post is about, it provides an easy form of navigating your site, and it allows Technorati to do a better job indexing your posts. The Technorati factor alone is a great reason to start tagging because your posts become easier to find at Technorati, thus driving more traffic to your website.

1. Akismet

Spam is a big problem with WordPress based blogs. It seems that as soon as your site is indexed in a search engine, the spam comments start flooding in. Stop the spam now with Akismet. Akismet, is a spam killing plugin created by Matt Mullenweg, the founder of WordPress, so you know it’s good. Akismet is tightly integrated with WordPress itself, allowing for easy comment management. Every comment you get is sent through Akismet’s spam-detecting servers for community-based spam analysis. The result? Ridiculously low false-positives, and an almost nonexistent false-negatives.

Don’t like the idea of all your visitors’ comments going through someone else’s server? Check out Spam Karma 2. It’s just as good as Akismet and deserves the rating along side Akismet as the number one WordPress plugin.

Thanks to Scott Yang this is no longer a problem. He’s developed a WordPress plugin called Permalink Redirect. What the plugin does is make sure that all pages only have one URL; the URL you specified in your permalink structure option. If a person visits your site using the incorrect URL they will automatically be redirected to the correct URL using a 301 redirect, insuring that it won’t happen again.

Now a word for the wise. After you install this plugin, make sure that you set your permalink structure to include a trailing slash at the end if you haven’t already. It will save you from a lot of headaches down the road.