I’ve noticed that many Wordpress users are afraid of upgrading their Wordpress to 2.1 version. Well, that post won’t be helpful for them, because Lorelle wrote such a comprehensive post in that topic, and I think there is nothing left to write about. I’m using Wordpress 2.1 since the first post on this blog, and I must say there were a few problems with compatibility of my favorite ones that I use on another blog. I didn’t notice any Wordpress 2.1 Plugins Must Have List, maybe it’s relevant to that I didn’t search for that query in fact. Anyway, I’ve decided to show you all plugins that you have to install on your Wordpress 2.1 blog.

Adsense-Deluxe - it’s one of the greatest plugins for Wordpress. Thanks to it you can place adverts anywhere on your blog. AdSense Deluxe is also able to take care of 3 AdSense blocks display on a single page limit. Also, you can manage not only Google AdSense adverts, but everything that you want to place on your blog template. And you can do it easily from your admin panel, without digging in the template code anytime you want to change something.

Aksimet - Plugin that checks your comments against the Akismet web service to see if they look like spam or not. Aksimet is a standard installed Wordpress plugin, so you just have to activate it (after registration for API on Wordpress.com, if you don’t have an account yet)

Contact Form ][ - It’s simple contact form for your blog. In my opinion using a contact form is the better way to stay in touch with your readers than making your e-mail public. First, people don’t have to re-type your e-mail from the anti-spam image. Second - spam spiders will never index your e-mail to their spam lists.

Digg This - It’s very smart plugin that adds Digg story link on detection on digg referrer. I’m afraid that without that plugin your chance to enter the Digg home page gets a little bit far-fetched.

Feedburner Feed Replacement - That plugin forwards all feed traffic to Feedburner while letting through some important User-Agents. All Wordpress feed links will be redirected to its Feedburner addresses. You must use it if you have your feeds on Feedburner. If you have not - get your feeds burn now.

Fuzzy Recent Comments - A WordPress widget that lists a fuzzy number of recently commented entries. You know you need it if you want to increase number of comments on your blog, don’t you?

Fuzzy Recent Posts - A WordPress widget that lists a fuzzy number of recently posted entries. Good thing to make navigation a little bit simplier, and increase page views statics.

MyAvatars - This plugin allows you to add MyBlogLog avatars to Wordpress comments. I’m not using it at now, but I think you will be interested on it.

Optimal Title - Plugin that makes your blog a little bit more SEO. It mirrors the function of wp_title() exactly, but moves the position of the ’separator’ to after the title rather than before. After installed your blog has different titles on every single page.

Related Entries - It’s great alternative for older WASABI plugin that doesn’t work correctly with new Wordpress 2.1 version.

Related Entries for Feeds - that plugin will add a batch of related entries links to your feeds. It requires Extract Terms plugin.

runPHP - Sometimes you want to put PHP code into a post, this one allows you to make that code works.

SRG Clean Archives - A nice uniform way to display your archives. Standard monthly links on sidebar totally suck, so this plugin gives you a way to show your archives on a smart single page, as a list of links to single posts, set in order according to months.

Ultimate Tag Warrior - Ultimate Tag Warrior is a tagging plugin, that’s heavy on tag visualisation. It’s the best way to tag posts on your Wordpress.

WordPress Database Backup - On-demand backup of your WordPress database. That plugin allows you to make a database backup straight from Wordpress Admin Panel, download it to your computer, or send it to your e-mail. Scheduled Backup is another great feature here.

You can find a list of many (but not all!) plugins compatible with WordPress version 2.1 on the Wordpress Codex. Of course there might be the ones that I haven’t listed here, so don’t be afraid of commenting that post. Just remember - it’s a simple Wordpress 2.1-Plugins-Must-Have list, and forgive me that Nike+ iPod Stats was not mentioned, ok?