WordPress has long been used for helping people to easily create a functional and attractive looking weblog, but only recently have people started to use it for CMS purposes and even business blogging.

When you go to build a professional business blog, you need to bring a different mindset to the table.  Many of the popular WordPress plugins often won’t apply to your average business blog.  So what plugins should your business blog use?

WebHypes has taken the time to throw together a great list of 15 WordPress plugins that are ideal for a professional blog.   You’ll find a few of the usual suspects, but you’ll also get a bunch of other plugins you might not have thought of.

With the recent popularity of themes attempting to turn WordPress into a content management system (CMS), people have begun purchasing premium WordPress themes in order to get the features and look they are wanting for their website.

As Josh Byer’s points out, people can instead use free WordPress plugins to achieve much of the CMS functionality they are looking for.  Miriam of WordPress Garage also adds that a few additional plugins to turn WordPress into a CMS.  

While using a theme designed specifically to function as a CMS has a few advantages, I think those of us that are on a budget can definitely get many of the CMS features we crave through the use of these WordPress plugins.

If you were looking to purchase/download a CMS, what options are you most looking for?  Can you get this functionality via plugins?  I’d love to get everyones thoughts on this!

With the release of WordPress 2.3, users now have access to a built-in tagging system that previously required the use of a WordPress plugin, such as Ultimate Tagging Warrior (UTW) or Simple Tagging.

Unfortunately, both of these plugins offered some functionality that is not yet available in the default tagging system. If you are missing features such as getting recommended tags, auto addition or subtraction of a pluralized tag (examples include mentioning Vista but your tag is Windows Vista or your post mentioning download, but your tag is downloads), and a type-ahead auto completion feature, then Ryan of CyberNet has a solution for you!

This WordPress plugin is called Recommended Tags, and it was built only for the tagging system in WordPress 2.3 or above. Simply upload and activate the plugin, then begin using it to assist you with your tagging!

When it comes to WordPress, there are many things that separate it from the competition. My personal favorite, though, is the WordPress community, which has contributed all sorts of Wordpress plugins to anyone using the WordPress software. These are available for free without any obligation.

Many plugins are situational, either for certain types of blogs, or for certain particular functions, and probably don’t have a place on every WordPress blog. There are a few, however, that every WordPress blog should be using in some form.

Here is my list of the top plugins all WordPress blogs should be using, in no particular order:

• Related Posts - Arguably the most important plugin Wordpress has to offer. This plugin shows a designated number of related entries below your post (or wherever you want to place it). This is ideal for anyone, but especially for those that get a lot of search engine traffic. It goes a long way to keep web surfers on your site.
• Add Related Posts to Your Feed - Adds the above mentioned Related Posts to your feed (requires the Related Posts or Ultimate Tagging Warrior plugin(s) to be installed in order to work).
• All-in-One SEO Pack - This is the ultimate SEO plugin for optimizing your blog for search engines. It automates the SEO process and gives you control over individual title, tags, and description information.
• Permalink Redirect - This plugin does a permanent 301 redirect. This will ensure that search engines don’t penalize you for duplicate posts when they index your site (with and without the www, as well as posts that don’t include the trailing /). This plugin now also redirects your site’s default feed to your Feedburner feed and allows you to set up custom redirects.
• WP-Contact Form - Many e-mail spammers search the web looking for e-mail addresses to use for spam purposes. Having your e-mail address available on somewhere on your website (including in the code somewhere) makes you vulnerable to these people. This plugin creates a contact form that people can use to contact you, so your e-mail address is not displayed. It also includes spam protection and some other optional features.
• WP-DB Manager - This plugin gives you full control of your database, including how to back it up, restore it, and deleting tables when necessary. If this plugin proves to be to advanced, the alternative is WordPress Database Backup, which allows you to backup your database, but doesn’t make it easy to restore it if something comes up.
• Google Sitemaps - Generates an XML-Sitemap file of your website that Google, Yahoo!, and MSN will use to index your blog. This ensures Google is aware of all of your new posts, as well as any updates you’ve made to posts that were previously indexed and need to be updated.
• Akismet - This plugin comes by default with all current Wordpress installations, but requires activation. You can obtain a free key to activate it. It will catch most spam and place it in a approval queue so you can view it before it is posted on to your website.
• Bad Behavior - Prevents known spam bots from accessing your website and is compatible with Akismet (mentioned above).
• Gamer’s Pack - As video game technology continues to increase, this plugin will be more and more important. This plugin that makes your website easily viewable on the Nintendo Wii, Nintendo DS, and Sony PSP gaming systems. I’ve also found it helps people trying to view your website on a cellular phone.

So, there is my list. 10 plugins that I feel all Wordpress users should use regardless of what type of blog they are running. I intentionally did not include any plugins that use comments, as many blogs do not accept comments, making these plugins not needed for them. My goal with this post was to cover only plugins that should be used regardless of the type of blog is being run.

Is there a plugin that you feel should have been included on this list? Let me know in the comments below!

Over the past year, many Search Engine Optimization experts have been encouraging internal linking as a good way to distribute link juice internally on your website.   Internal linking also has an added bonus of helping to retain search engine traffic and other visitors, which will hopefully increase your page views and possibly improve revenue.

Unfortunately, the default WordPress install will automatically generate an internal pingback to that post each time you link internally.   I’m sure some people like this feature, but I’ve never really cared for it on most types of WordPress blogs.   This is especially true for blogs that have not seperated their trackbacks/pingbacks from their comments.

If you are interested in turning off internal pingbacks, I recommend you check out the No Self Pings WordPress plugin by Blogwaffe.  Just upload, activate, and your problem is solved!

If you are a frequenter of popular social sites such as Digg, you may have noticed that sometimes a blog will be down when you try to visit it. Unfortunately, unless a website has a dedicated server, it is going to often be difficult for a blog to survive the Digg effect and avoid some downtime.

While this definitely can be considered a problem, I would consider it to be a good problem to have because it means you are writing some great content. As a WordPress user, there are options available to help you avoid downtime for your blog in the form of WordPress plugins.

Up until recently the WP-Cache 2 WordPress plugin was the primary plugin people used to reduce serverload, but recently a better version of the WordPress plugin was created, called WP Super Cache.

Here is some information about WP Super Cache straight from the author:

A classic method of preparing an under powered site for a Digg front page appearance or a Slashdotting has been to manually save copies of dynamically generated pages, and place them in directories that match the permalinks structure. This method of performance enhancement does help servers handle a higher load without crashing, but is only effective when an oncoming rush of traffic can be anticipated. WP-Cache alone, while helpful, is not adequate in many cases, so WP Super Cache was created to effectively mimic the manual page caching method, but to handle it in an automated fashion.

When a visitor who is not logged in, or who has not left a comment, visits they will be served a static HTML page out of the supercache subdirectory within the WordPress cache directory. If you navigate to that directory you can view an exact replica of your permalink structure as well as the HTML files within the directories. To determine if a page has been served out of the Super Cache, view the source and the last line on the page should read <!– super cache –> or <!– super cache gz –>.

If a visitor who is logged in or who has left a comment views a cached page, it will be served from the standard WP Cache function and the last line in the source code will read <!– Cached page served by WP-Cache –>

In order to install this plugin, you simply need to go through the normal process of uploading and activating it. It will then create an Options panel where you can set your desired cache time.

Note: For maximum performance, it is recommended to also download XCache and install it. You can then use the XCache WordPress plugin to improve WordPress load times even further.