One of the reasons I like WordPress so much is the availability of so many plugins. Plugins allow you to add features and customize how WordPress works. Odds are if you want to do it in WordPress, a plugin has been made to do it.

All the plugins listed here are free and ones that I use. There are thousands of plugins to choose from. I have included the ones that have helped me the most. These I have found to be very helpful for small business web sites

Plugins that change the appearance of your WordPress Web Site

These plugins add features to your web site that improve your visitor's experience.

Superb slideshow gallery – I wanted to create a little picture gallery that changed the pictures every few seconds for my web site. This plugin creates a very clean slideshow. It is simple to use and does an excellent job of presenting your slides or pictures. You have control of the slide display time and the transition time. You are required to include a link for each picture, so that when a visitor clicks on the picture it brings them to another page. This is a great feature to help your visitors find what they are looking for visually.

Yet Another Related Posts Plugin – One of the problems I have as a WordPress website owner is creating links between my posts automatically. A well designed website provides ways for visitors to find related articles or posts. This plugin automatically adds related posts to you posts by using post titles, content, tags, and categories. You have control over the number of related posts and the way your related posts look. In the most recent versions you can make use of templates to fully customize how the related posts appear.

Greg's Threaded Comment Numbering – I was looking for a way to not only number the comments submitted to my posts, but also a way to nest threads or replies. This little plugin creates a numbering scheme for your comments and also displays them in a hierarchy. In WordPress 2.7 new comment features were added such as including threading, paging, and your choice of ascending or descending date order. This plugin takes advantage of these features and produces a very well integrated comment structure with threading numbering scheme. The comment may have a number of 2 and the reply would be numbered 2.1 and so on. It can support up to 10 levels of threading (2.1.3.2.4.1.2.3.2.1). You may not want this level of detail, but at least it is available.

Plugins that work behind the scenes.

WordPress Database Backup – We all know we need to back up our database on a regular basis. This plugin does the backup automatically and emails you the backup file. Now you don't have any excuses. All you have to do is copy the backup file to a CD or a backup drive.

Google XML Sitemaps – Google is the king in search today. If you want anyone to find you you must be listed in Google. To mke it easier for Google and other search engines it is important to have a sitemap XML file to submit to them. This plugin creates an XML sitemap that is automatically uploaded to Google, Yahoo and Bing when you add a post to your WordPress site. This provides these search engines with information about what pages and posts they should look for. Anything we can do to make it easier for Google to find our pages is a good thing.

WebsiteDefender WordPress Security – WordPress is easy to use and very popular, but there are some security issues you need to be aware of. This plugin scans your site and provides you with advice on how to make your website more secure. One of the best features that I found was the ability to rename all the table prefixes in the database without affecting your ability to get into the database. Why would you need to do this? Hackers use this technique called SQL injection to gain access to your database. They know the names of the tables in WOrdPress and can get around the password protection built into WordPress using this technique. Renaming the tables makes it more difficult for them to perform their dirty work.

To see some of these plugins at work visit my small business websiteat http://www.thewebhostadvisor.com