Besides my own aLinks plugin, there are other WordPress plugins that I couldn’t live without. Here is a short list of them:

Edit N Place - This plugin lets you edit your blog posts right on the front page of your blog, without going into the admin panel. It’s all possible with a little AJAX magic. Now of course I wrote this plugin, but I’m not putting it at the top of my list because of that. I wrote it because I really wanted a plugin that did what Edit N Place does, and since writing it, and use it constantly! kleidung

Ultimate Tag Warrior - Categories are so Web 1.0. Everyone is using tags, or keywords, now. Unlike categories, tags don’t have a restrictive hierarchy. Right out of the box, WordPress doesn’t support tags (why?), and that’s where Ultimate Tag Warrior, or just UTW, comes into play. Of all the tagging plugins available, this one is by far the best.
(I’ve written a small plugin that lets you display tags in your sidebar using the Sidebar Widget plugin. You can download that here. The tag cloud you see in my sidebar here is using it. You must already have UTW installed to use it.)

K2 - This is actually a theme, not a plugin, but it might as well be a plugin because it’s far more advanced that most themes you come across. I use it on all my blogs, including this one. It has lots of AJAXy goodness, and already has built in support for many popular plugins, like UTW. Although it is a theme, you can still create your own themes that sit on top of the K2 framework.

Spam Karma 2 - If you don’t have a comment spam plugin installed, you might as well be walking around in a lions cage with steaks strapped to your body. I’ve tried more than a few comment spam plugins, and nothing works as well as Spam Karma 2.

Sidebar Widgets - If you’re not using the Sidebar Widgets plugin, you’re blogging in the dark ages. Without widgets, your sidebar content needs to be hard coded into your theme. The Sidebar Widgets plugin lets you drag & drop items into your sidebar. With this plugin, it only takes you a few seconds to add new items to your sidebar, or rearrange the items in your sidebar. It’s just so easy.