One of the reasons I initially chose to use Wordpress as the platform for the Daily Blitz was it’s extensibility. I taught myself quite a bit of PHP coding learning the ropes and even authored myself a few plugins for this beast.

I’ll share with you the collection of plugins I use to make this site tick; I know there are quite a few and my server must be straining under every page load, but I find quite a bit of value in each of these plugins…

• Sphere It by Sphere
  This plugin adds those “related articles” links to the bottom of each post. A lot of plugins and services have tried to emulate the sexyness, but this is by far the best implementation I’ve seen. Only upon clicking the link does it pull in content from other websites to help your readers get more info on a subject. Why has this been so long in the making? (This plugin isn’t visible to the public on The Daily Blitz; in testing)
• WP e-Commerce by Instinct
  This plugin runs our online store and helps us keep track of our pricing and inventory of each of our products and services. Very quick and easy to setup, and I really like the layout and user interface.
• Wordpress Database Backup by Austin Matzko
  Improving on the offering that was once an included part of the WP distribution, this WPDB plugin automatically emails me a complete backup of my site, every day, without fail. This has saved my neck a few times, and combined with the huge storage capacity and infinite archiving of GMail, I’m able to restore the site to any date on a whim.
• Wiki Links by Vlad Babii
  Wiki Links automatically links text in posts to articles of the same name. For example, if I had an article titled “For Example,” the beginning of this sentance would automatically link to it. This makes for some great interlinking possibilities within your own site, and alleviates some pressure from your users.  (This plugin isn’t visible to the public on The Daily Blitz; in testing)
• Weasel’s No HTTP Author by Weasel
  A plugin I created myself! As I stripped out the common URL: field in comments, many spam bots ended up putting URLs to their sites in the comment author’s name. These links weren’t caught by Akismet or other applications, and this quick and easy plugin plugs that hole.
• Weasel’s Login Redirect by Weasel
  Another plugin of my own design, this one allows me to change where the default Wordpress Login screen takes you. Without this plugin, the logging in user is transported to your dashboard - which I find uncomfortable.
• Weasel’s Authorshare by Weasel
  Yet another one by me! As we run a shared-profits site here at The Daily Blitz, I wanted to have a quick and easy screen that will show everyone exactly where they stand in terms of how many articles they’ve posted. This plugin goes a step farther and can even post customizable top-10 lists.
• Viper’s Video Quicktags by Viper007Bond
  It turns out the [embed] HTML tag used in Google/Youtube video enclosures has been deprecated, and isn’t supported by Wordpress! This plugin takes care of that problem by adding appropriate buttons to your Visual Editor.  It takes care of the code in the back end so you don’t have to worry about compatability.
• Role Manager by Thomas (originally by RedAlt)
  This plugin lets you define custom roles - and lets you assign them to users, levels, and even has a plugin interface for custom admin screens. A godsend application when dealing with multiple authors; I couldn’t work without this!
• Recent Love by Ron Rothman
  This plugin is one of the first I installed, and is officially the only one that has survived the years gone by. In that time I’ve ultra-modified it (for example, mine will dynamically expand to include 5-10 posts from the last 2 days, and has a host of custom messages). Perhaps I will release it myself as a new version (with Ron’s permission of course)… Or perhaps I’ll just keep modifying it privately ;)
• PHP Exec by Pryadi Iman
  This plugin allows you to execute PHP code from within your articles and posts. Handy for customizing certain pages without having to write a seperate HTML object for it.
• Our Todo List by Toydi
  Great for issuing a shared to-do list to each of your site’s staff members, freely editable by all. Now if only I could convince my staff to actually use the thing…
• Google Sitemap Generator by Arne Brachhold
  Automatically submit my posts to Google in a Google-specified format? Why, yes please!
• DoFollow by Kimmo Suominen
  Wordpress will, by default, add the “rel=nofollow” tag to each of your comment links. This was a measure to dissuade spammers from persuing comment-spam tactics; now that my site is relatively spam-free there’s no need for it. This plugin handles that for me.
• Custom Query String by Matt Read
  Wordpress typically allows you one format - this plugin allows you to have 10 posts on the main page, 15 on the archive pages, and 2 on the author pages. This is obviously handy for getting the ultimate control on site formatting.
• Comment Analysis by Mark Styles
  Wordpress doesn’t contain any functionality to tally up how many comments each person has written; or how many comments each post has. This plugin neatly compiles several lists into custom top-10 lists for you.
• Clutter Free by Mark Jaquith
  This plugin allows me to strip extraneous info from the posting page, making the site less confusing and cluttered (especially for my less web-savvy staff).
• Category Visibility by Rich Hamilton
  Category Visibility allows me to mark certain post categories to not show up on the front page, allowing me to run my “Aviation” and “Tehc” sub-blogs without interfering with the main site.

There are a few others I run - Userpic & Avatar, Extended User List, Akismet, and Ajax Comments - but I couldn’t find their websites anymore. Defunct?