WordPress is a very versatile platform where you can format your blog with an infinite amount of configurations and features. WordPress itself is so self sufficient that you can code your blog to do whatever you want, provided you know how to code. But what if you only know basic coding and do not want to spend hours after hours configuring your blog with all the features of a world-class website? You pay some one to do it for you OR you could install some plugins. Here’s a list of ahyen.com’s Top 10 Free Must-Have Basic WordPress Plugins!
The Top 10 Free Must-Have Basic WordPress Plugins
Akismet
Now this is a no-brainer and it comes installed as default with your WordPress installer. All you have to do is to activate Akismet, key in your WordPress.com API key and you shall be spam-free for the rest of your blogging days. Trust me, no one likes to read spammy comments. Download
FeedBurner FeedSmith
Feeds are an integral part of blogging as some of your readers would prefer to get updates about your site via e-mail or through a feed reader. This plugin here will handle all your feeds and divert it to FeedBurner, which is the best feed delivery system on the Internet. Rest assured that your readers will now get the latest up to date information about your WordPress blog! Download
Google Analytics For WordPress
Forget about WP-Stats. You need real, world-class analytics and Google Analytics is the way to go. Google Analytics is the best free analytics you can get on the market plus its demographics are highly configurable. Whether you like pie-charts, trend charts or bar charts Google Analytics can do it all and the key to integrating your WordPress blog with it is through this plugin. Download
Google XML Sitemaps
In order for Google or any search engine to index your website, you must have a sitemap configured. Although you can probably create your very own sitemap manually, you probably wouldn’t want to do that for every single blog post or article you publish. The Google XML Sitemaps plugin updates your sitemap automatically every time a new post is published and also notifies all major search engines! Download
IntenseDebate Comments
The Comments section is where you engage your readers and create interactivity between the author and the reader. Therefore it is important to format this section properly and make it as user-friendly and as easy to read as possible. I’ve tried to give my Comments section a clean look but when I found out about IntenseDebate for WordPress, I installed it instantly. IntenseDebate looks professional and it’s layout can be customized according to your preference. Comment rating and management is a breeze with this plugin so why do it yourself? Leave it to the pros! Download
SexyBookmarks
With the increase of social media sites on the Internet, your blog’s potential greatly expands. Sharing your blog on these networks quickly become a tedious task as your readers have to copy and paste the URLs into social media sites like Twitter, Facebook and Digg. With plugins like SexyBookmarks, it is now a breeze and it looks great! Download
Theme Tester
Theme Tester is a plugin which hides all the CSS customization you are changing once you activate it. It saves your readers from wondering what is happening to the blog when it looks different every other second. However this plugin only pauses the stylesheet of your blog. Any changes you make to the widgets, sidebars or contents are still visible so use with care 
Download
TweetMeme Retweet Button
You should be wondering why I included this into my list by now. Yeah the TweetMeme Retweet Button is currently one of the most popular bookmarking tools and it looks good too! TweetMeme also offers link tracking so you could see who tweeted your post and also how many retweets have been made! Choose between the standard or the mini version and add configure it with your Twitter account name and you are ready to go! Download
WordPress Mobile Edition
I chose WordPress Mobile Edition over WPtouch because it is not just specialized for high-end touch screen devices namely the iPhone, Blackberry and Android. I have experienced WPtouch looking terrible on my Nokia 5800 Xpress Music but WordPress Mobile Edition looks just the same on any platform. No doubt WPtouch looks smashing but which one do you want? Your site to look good or more compatibility with other mobile devices? Your choice. Download
WordPress Related Posts
This plugin allows you to add related posts to your current post and at the same time increase the clickthrough rating on your site. It is as simple plugin and works almost flawlessly. You can change the code to adapt it to your site theme as you like. What I like about this plugin is that it is simple and suited for those who have a clean theme. Just install it and plug the PHP string into your template and you are done! Download
Express Some Gratitude
As you know these plugins are free of charge and the developer are only human. They designed these plugins in their free time (hmm some might depend on it to make a living) so if you feel like it do donate or at the very least promote their plugins so other would donate too. With your support these developers would then be able to continue improving their plugins and provide their best support to you.