be called from within a page or post instead. Or maybe there is no plug-in to accomplish what you want to do in just a few lines of custom code.
By default, WordPress does not enable embedded PHP code, partly because of security concerns: Should malicious or broken code find its way onto your site, WordPress will safely ignore it without this plug-in. Any user who can edit your site can take advantage of Exec-PHP, so be sure you know and trust your content providers before activating this plug-in.
NextGen Gallery
WordPress 2.5 introduced a robust media library for uploading and managing files, but the library is best suited to storing individual pictures or PDFs to embed or link to in your posts. For full-fledged photo galleries, look to NextGen Gallery.
NextGen accepts image uploads via HTTP or FTP in both graphic and Zip format. Once placed into a gallery, each picture can have its own title, description and keywords, as initially defined by the images' Exif, IPTC or XMP metadata. Galleries can be sorted automatically using this metadata or manually via drag-and-drop, and related galleries can be grouped into albums - sort of a gallery of galleries. Configurable thumbnails and display sizes ensure the pictures fit into your WordPress theme, whether viewed individually or in a Flash-enabled slide show that offers both mouse and keyboard navigation.
Photoblogs - sites that focus almost exclusively on still media - would be better accommodated by integrating with a dedicated photo service such as Flickr. But if your site only occasionally needs to present image albums, or you want everything bundled into WordPress without signing up for another service, NextGen has you covered.
Subscribe to Comments
In the best blogs, authors aren't just speaking their minds, they're engaging with their audience. You want to cultivate and respond to your readers' comments, and a good way to promote discussion is to make it as easy as possible for readers to reply to your posts.
Subscribe to Comments adds an optional checkbox to your comment form. WordPress normally requires an e-mail address from all comment authors; Subscribe to Comments uses this information to inform comment authors of all additional comments posted after theirs. Comment authors can choose to unsubscribe themselves at any time, or the blog's administrator can manually unsubscribe users.
Without this plug-in, visitors to your site may leave questions without ever coming back to see the answers. Subscribe to Comments is an easy way to encourage back-and-forth not just between blogger and reader, but also among readers as well.
AJAX Comment Preview
You wouldn't publish a post without first clicking the "Preview" button in order to see it as your readers will see it, would you? And shouldn't your readers have the same option? When they write a response to a blog post, they'll find a "Preview" button beneath the comment field if the AJAX Comment Preview plug-in is installed.
With AJAX Comment Preview, readers' comments will be translated into their final appearance without the page needing to be refreshed; comment authors will then be able to tweak their text before clicking "Submit Comment." Not only a handy proofreading tool, AJAX Comment Preview is also an excellent way for your readers to test whether your site accepts HTML, BBCode or wikitext markup languages.
But wait, there's more!
While these 10 plug-ins make WordPress a more powerful platform, there are many others that provide basic or fun features.
For example, every blogger needs to think about how to handle spam; fortunately, WordPress comes bundled with Akismet, an excellent place to start (and, in most cases, stop) dealing with the problem of junk e-mail.
If you haven't upgraded to WordPress 2.8, which auto-adjusts for daylight-saving time, the Automatic Timezone plug-in will perform the same function.
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