WordPress is a great blog and web site tool right out of the box, but you have to admit that WordPress Plugins add that extra pop and there’s something for everyone when it comes to WP plugins. It’s like finding your dream girl AND finding out her parents have a house on the lake and season tickets to [insert your favorite sports team here]. Here are five WordPress plugins, compatible with WP 2.5.x, that we highly recommend that you deploy on your WordPress web site before you even think of putting up that first post.

All in One SEO Pack

This is the SCUD missile of SEO plugins. It allows you complete control over your tags, meta tags and page titles.

Simple Tags

This handy plugin works with WP versions 2.3 and up. It has a mass tag importer, works with imbedded tags, and is compatible with the popular WYSIWYG editors (e.g., TinyMCE, FCKEditor, etc.). Combine this with the All in One SEO pack above and you are well on your way to having a nicely optimized web site.

QuickPHP

This is an excellent little plugin by David Chait and it’s been around awhile. It lets you put PHP functions right into your WP Pages without having to create a template with the PHP code embedded in it so you can put PHP right there on the page “on the fly.”

Secure and Accessible Contact Form

Not quite as powerful as the popular cForms II, but this contact form does allow you to create complex, custom forms using dropdowns, radio buttons, checkboxes, and more. I think it’s a nice compromise between a drop-in contact form and a full blown forms generator script.

WP Database Backup

There’s simply no excuse not to back up that WP database with this plugin. As you know, the heart and soul of WP lies in its MySQL database. Lose that and you have lost all your posts, comments, categories, links, and all settings. This makes it easy to backup the MySQL file and download it to your hard drive or have it emailed to you. And you can even schedule the backup to run any time you want. How cool is that?

So these are our recommendations for plugin must-haves. Feel free to drop a comment with your suggestions for can’t-live-without plugins!

Last week, I talked about what a great application WordPress is for the solo professional or small business owner. It’s easier than ever before to create a professional web site with just WordPress and a few handy tools. (Of course if you really want a site that knocks their socks off, it would be money well spent to hire a web designer to create a professional design and pull all the pieces together for you!)

Whether you roll up your sleeves and do it yourself or hire someone to do it for you, you should think about employing at least these five plugins to help drive traffic to your site, to add functionality to your site or to otherwise enhance it so that the visitor’s experience is the best. If visitors to your site don’t like what they see, or if the information they seek is not easily attainable (read: no more than two mouse clicks away), they won’t stay. And what’s worse, they won’t return.