Anyone knows how great WordPress is. But few people know that it can be better. WordPress supports a large variety of plugins that can enhance your blogging experience, that can improve your blogs’s performance or plugins that simply make your life a lot easier. We selected only a few in this release, giving you a 10 must-install plugins list. Download, install, activate, try and let us know your opinion about them. Enjoy and happy blogging!

1. Akismet
Automattic Kismet (Akismet for short) Wordpress Plugin is a collaborative effort to make comment and trackback spam a non-issue, so you never have to worry about spam again.
Plugin Page | Download Plugin

2. podPress
The podPress pluggin gives you everything you need in one easy plugin to use WordPress for Podcasting.
Plugin Page | Download Plugin

3. Technochrati Tagging
Allows you to use Technorati tags (http://www.technorati.com/help/tags.html) in your blog entries by adding a custom field to blog posts. Also allows for tag listings (http://www.technorati.com/tags/) to be added to your website.
Plugin Page | Download Plugin

4. Flexible Upload
Flexible Upload is a plugin for Wordpress 2.0.x and 2.1.x to enhance the image upload functionality. It resizes pictures to a specific dimension, creates custom-sized thumbnails, adds an optional watermark signature, and other options
Plugin Page | Download Plugin

5. Google Analytics
The Google Analytics plugin for WordPress lets you easily add Google’s web tracking script to your WordPress powered site.
Plugin Page | Download Plugin

6. Mighty AdSense
It will allow you to host the code in WordPress without having to modify the templates. Google Ads are displayed in post item and you can specify how many blocks are going to show up in a page. Ads preview tool is included in the control panel.
Plugin Page | Download Plugin

7. Wordpress Video Plugin
This plugin will let you embed Flash Videos (flv) in your WordPress posts/pages. It supports YouTube, Google Video, Metacafe, MyspaceTV, Yahoo! Video… and many others!
Plugin Page | Download Plugin

8. Wordpress-phpMyAdmin
This is a simple plugin that will allow you direct access to your WordPress database through phpMyAdmin within your WP admin console. No need to deal with phpMyAdmin setup and login and settings are taken from your WP settings.
Plugin Page | Download Plugin

9. Search Pages
This plugin lets your visitors search through posts and pages instead of only posts.
Plugin Page | Download Plugin

10. WP-Print 2.11
Displays a printable version of your WordPress blog’s post/page.
Download Plugin | Plugin Demo

Notorious spammer Christopher “Rizler” Smith was sentenced to 30 years in prison by a federal judge on Wednesday.

Under the spam companies Burnsville Internet and Xpress Pharmacy Direct, Smith allegedly sent more than one billion emails through America Online. The FBI claims he made approximately $18m during his final year as a penis pill pusher. Federal authorities raided Xpress Pharmacy and Smith’s home, seized $4.2m in assets, including a $1.1m house and 17 luxury vehicles worth $1.8m.

Philipp Lenssen at Google Blogoscoped posted yesterday about how the accuracy of Alexa data is really poor. The specifics of his post are really a spoof as all the “data” is made up. Philipp is in fact spoofing the Alexa methodology itself as he indicated that the data: “uses gut feeling from a selected sample group (me) as data source”. Alexa’s accuracy problems are well known.

The underlying problem is that the Alexa data is derived from users who use the Alexa toolbar. At the end of the day, the audience is just not large enough, and the dependency on a willingness to install the toolbar introduces a natural bias into the date. My own experience suggests that these problem become worse and worse as you deal with lower and lower traffic level sites. Have a site that gets 20,000 visitors per day? You are not really on the map with Alexa at that level.

Because your competitors are in the same business as you are, the bias problem no longer is a factor to worry about (because the bias will affect all the compares sites equally). For most businesses this will provide a quick way to compare the relative web site traffic levels in their industry. So the accuracy problems are real, but there is still a way to use the tool to extract useful information.