If you are just staring out with WordPress and wondering which plug-ins to use, listed below are a few you may want to consider.

Prevent comment spammers with the Akismet plugin. Most web hosts are smart enough to include Akismet by default with their WordPress automatic installers. If you don’t have it, I highly recommend you get it.

W3 Total Cache enhances the speed/performance of your blog exponentially.  Though it can be a bit server resource heavy. As an alternative you can use WP-Super Cache.

Broken Link Checker checks broken links across your blog on a regular basis. This will be very helpful to have as your site changes over time.

Contact Form 7 allows you to create a customized contact form on your WordPress site. All entries are sent to an email address of your choosing. The best thing about this plugin versus others is that it is AJAX based. So it loads faster and easier on the server. A faster blog is a stickier blog that visitors will stay on for longer periods of time.

You can use WP-DBManager to send you regular backups of your blog by email or save them directly to the server. This is a very important part of managing a WordPress blog. WordPress hacks/accidents aren’t as common as they used to be but they still can happen. You can use Vaultpress as another alternative but it’s a paid service.

If you know nothing about making your WordPress blog more secure then WP Security Scan is an excellent plugin to help you figure it out. It also provides protections of its own.

WPtouch makes it so your website/blog is formatted for any visitor using a mobile device (iPhone, Android, iPad etc.) In this day and age, more and more people are visiting websites from mobile devices so its an important consideration to keep in mind.

I learned a while ago that one of my domains was already registered with a Google Apps account by a previous domain owner. So I wrote to Dreamhost (my webhost at the time) requesting that they set me up with an email alternative. They responded right away saying that I needed to take care of the issue right away with Google. When I thought about it for a moment longer I realized this situation was not acceptable. If someone was using my domain for email purposes they could possibly send spam, and I would be held responsible.

So I went back to the the Google Apps website and asked for a password reset. Luckily Google provided ample options to prove I was the rightful domain owner.

Once I logged into the Google Apps control panel I could see the email accounts that previous owner prior owner used. A quick glance showed that they weren’t very active and that he was using it to forward mail to one of his other domains. In any case, I deleted these accounts right away. I also changed all account settings so he could not reset the password and take over the account.  This didn’t make me feel warm and fuzzy inside but nor did finding out accidentally that someone was using my domain to send and receive emails.

I never mentioned to this anyone, but after reading a Dotsauce.com article referencing expired domains and identity theft risks in connection with Google Apps, I decided to mention it here.

So let this be a lesson to you, if you are planning to let your domain expire make sure to cancel any Google Apps domain account you have associated with it first. Secondly if you registered a domain that was previously owned or if you aren’t sure, make sure to check if its registered with Google Apps even if you have no plans on using it.

1) You can learn CSS and do it from scratch.  CSS and PHP are the basic building blocks of WordPress. There are other technical languages you might want to pick up as well. A good place to start learning CSS and PHP is at ThinkVitamin.com

2) You can design a mock-up of your website in Photoshop or other creative type software or even draw/paint and then scan your work. Once you’ve created a picture of what you want your template to look like you can send it to a designer who can cut it up into pieces which can then be used to compose a wordpress template you can easily use.

3) You can simply pay a designer to design the wordpress design for you, although this could prove to be costly depending on whom you hire and how much work needs to be done.

4) You can design your own wordpress template using Artisteer without touching a bit of code. Artisteer has a nice what-you-see-is-what-you-get  interface that makes designing your on wordpress template easy and fun.

5) If you are a windows user you can use an Adobe Photoshop plug-in called Divine that will cut your design into a wordpress template for you. Right now there is only a windows version of the plug-in. I am eagerly anticipating their mac version of the plugin..