My WordPress

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I am a busy mom so I am always looking for things to make my life more productive both online and off. Since lots of my friends are bloggers, I thought today I would share my favorite plug-ins for an installed wordpress blog to pass along what works well for me. I hope that you find a useful plug-in or two here and if you have one not listed, please leave me a comment. I am always looking for things to make my blogging life easier!So, first off, all four of my active blogs use the Studio Press Lifestyle Theme. I use Studio Press because of the ease of customization, excellent support and because they are both well coded and ahead of the curve.Because I use that theme, three of the blogs use the Featured Content Gallery plugin to make the scrolling pictures box at the top. On this blog, I replaced Featured Content with the Whrrl Widget so that as I take pictures from my iPhone, you see them. I also recoded this one to show my latest full post on the home page.So, what else do I think is blogorific?

• Add Graphical Signature-This one is old but still works well on my blogs. It is how I get the nifty little signature to show in each post.
• Comment Luv- Adds a line to each comment with the persons latest blog post. Great way to give back to those leaving you comments. Even if you don’t install this one on your blog you should register at the Comment Luv site so that when you do comment at someones blog using it, it will display your latest post.
• LinkWithin-I have been seeing this alot lately so I thought I would try it out here. It pulls similar stories and puts a link and thumbnail at the bottom of each post so that your readers are able to find more posts by you they may want to read.
• Thank Me Later-I have this in varying stages of testing on different blogs. It sends a thank you note to people who leave comments at whatever time interval you specify. It is well done and it certainly has its place on certain blogs. This one is too personal and I don’t like it here but works well on some others.
• MaxBlogPress Favicon-If you really have no idea how to put in the nifty little picture (favicon) in your URL than use this. Makes your blog branding that much more impressive. However, adding a favicon is easily accomplished in your FTP but for those who want to do it simply, here ya go!

These are my standards~meaning I have them installed on every blog and put them in at install. To me they are just integral to running  any blog:

• Akismet-No brainer spam controller. Standard on all WP installs now. USE it!
• All In One SEO Pack-Powerful punch of seo (search engine optimization) tools for your blog
• Google Analyticator-Adds Google Analytics fast and easy with no hand coding
• Google XML Sitemaps-Wraps up a neat little sitemap and sends it off to all the major search engines at the interval you set

If you want to check out my other blogs to see how I have things running there, feel free:

• BeTweenTalk Kids Product Reviews
• The Coupon Cupboard
• We Fit Families

So, there are some of the ones that I use and recommend. Hope it helps you be a little more productive in your blogging!What great things am I missing out on?