I have been using WordPress for about 3 months and I am grateful to Matt Mullenweg for making blogging a pain-free experience. FYI, Matt is the founding developer of this popular open-source blogging software.

While Matt deserves all the credits, let’s not forget those who spend countless hours working on WordPress plugins. Thanks guys!

Among the 1270 plugins out there, here are my top 10 must-haves WordPress Plugins:

1. Akismet
Let’s face it… no one likes SPAM and Akismet did what everyone is hoping for – get rid of it. Akismet checks your comments against the Akismet web service to see if they look like spam or not. So far, Akismet caught 30 spam comments on my blog.

2. WordPress Database Backup
This plugin creates backups of your core WordPress tables as well as other tables of your choice in the same database. I set this plugin to generate a backup file (weekly basis) and send it to my email.

3. Adsense Deluxe
If you decide to earn some income through your blog, to payoff your annual hosting/domain name at least, this plugin should be one of your favorites. It helps to take off some of your load when adding Adsense code into your posts.

4. Dagon Design Sitemap Generator
Sitemap can be crucial to your blog because it allows your visitors to access your blog quickly. See it in action here.

5. Top Commentator
This plugin will improve the interaction of your blog by encouraging your visitors to submit comment to your posts. The top commentator area will list out users with most comments on your blog with a return link to their website (if any).

6. Related post
This plugin will output a series of “related” entries based on keyword matching. Hence, it will improve the average time your visitors spent on your site.

7. Bookmark Me
You or your visitors can easily add links to social bookmarking sites (i.e Digg, Stumbleupon) with this plugin which adds a list of icon links at the end of each post.

8. WP-ContactForm

If you want to have a contact form on your blog but do not have the experience to build one, this plugin is perfect for you. It is simple, easy to use and it comes with built in SPAM protection. You can test the plugin here.

9. Popularity Contest
Isn’t great to know how popular your posts are? Popularity Contest will give a rating to all your posts by tracking the views, comments and trackbacks of each post.

10. WordPress Automatic Upgrade

WordPress Automatic Upgrade helps you to upgrade your WordPress to the latest version without hassle. First it backups your files and database and put your site into maintenance mode. Then it downloads the latest version of WordPress, disables your plugins and performs the upgrade. Once it is done, it will re-enables your plugins.