While Blogger may be the most popular blogging software in use today, WordPress has been my choice for the past 2 years with no plans to change. After starting out with Typepad, the customization of the WordPress platform was ideally suited for my photography, more specifically running a photo blog site.

What are the advantages of using WordPress? I believe that WordPress offers a lot more flexibility over the competition when it comes to site administration and customization. There are other blogging platforms which are easier to use, I grant you that, but when used to it’s full potential WordPress is far superior.

One of the first reasons for switching to WordPress was the fact I wanted to install the blog software to a server under my own domain name (ilovephotoblogs.com vs. ilovephotoblogs.typepad.com). That was a biggie. I was no longer sharing my traffic with a hosting service, just sole ownership of my own domain. For a hosting service, I have always used GoDaddy and they make uploading WordPress to your domain a snap. I highly recommend exploring Godaddy for this option if you like easy installation with no fuss or worries. I also found their customer support to be outstanding!

Plugins for customization. However, without a doubt the WordPress developer community is one of the most compelling reasons for converting your blog to WordPress. This world wide army of developers creates and makes  available thousands of plugins, free of charge, to expand the functionlity of your WordPress site.

Listed below are a list of my top 15 WordPress plugins which makes site administration more thorough without the headaches, and also allows for unlimited creativity….read more

Akismet – The best spam killer on the market today. If you enjoy open communications with your readership via comments, this plugin is A Must Have!. Here is a snapshot of Askimet on my site:

All in One SEO Pack – This plugin is streamlined for some best practices for WordPress SEO. Plugin allows for custom settings, but is set up to use with excellent default settings. A Must Have!

Easy Gravatars Plugin – Add Gravatars to your comments, without requiring any modifications to your theme files. Just activate and you’re done. If you look at any of the comments for our blog, the images you see next to each commenter is enabled by this plugin. This is a cool feature to allow a layer of customization for your readership. A Nice To Have.

Google XML Sitemaps – This plugin generates a XML-Sitemap compliant sitemap of your WordPress blog. This format is supported by Ask.com, Google, YAHOO and MSN Search. This plugin took away a lot of my sitemap pains and greatly reduced my crawl errors.  A Must Have!

Image Rotator – The Image-Rotator plug-in adds the ability to insert an image rotation panel into a WordPress blog. The plug-in features a management page which allows any users with upload privileges to easily manage the images used by the plug-in. I used this plugin to rotate announcements, features and advertisements under my header. Plugin manager allows you link images to specific pages or sites, track hits, and has an easy on/off capability for content management. A Nice To Have.

Kimili Flash Embed - The Kimili Flash Embed is a plugin for popular open source blogging systems that allows you to easily place Flash movies on your site. I used this plugin in the past to rotate images while working with Flash; however, I have since switched over to the Image Rotator to handle this task. Easy to use and I will be developing Flash content in the future to use with this plugin. A Nice To Have.

NextGen Gallery – Great image display plugin with easy administration. A Nice To Have.

Simple: Press Forum – Very cool plugin that allows you to create a forum on your WordPress blog. Here is an example of this forum plugin in action on our site. A Great To Have.

Simple Tags - Perfect tool to manage your tags. A Must Have!

Stumble Info Link – If you have never heard about StumbleUpon, stop what you’re doing and check it out now. Truly addictive! Use Stumble Info Link to display status on all links on your page. I love StumbleUpon and love this plugin. A Great To Have.

Subscribe Remind - If you are interested in building your readership/RSS subscriptions, this plugin is for you.  With the Subscribe-Remind plugin, some text will automatically be placed at the end of each of your posts inviting your readers to subscribe to your RSS feed. It’s an unobtrusive and effective way to turn visitors into subscribers.A Must Have!

Ultimate Google Analytics - Beef up your Google Analytics data with this great plugin. A Must Have!

Wassup – Positively, one of my favorite WordPress plugins ever! Track visitors in real time. Very readable admin console to keep track of your blog’s users visits. A Must Have!