I have been playing with wordpress plugins in a while and picking the appropriate basic plugins that my blog really needs really takes time considering the thousands of plugins available out there. The list below will help you decide what plugins that you must consider to install first before running into thousands of plugins out there.
1. Spam Protection Plugins
Days after you’ve setup your new blog you’ll notice comments coming so fast. Unfortunately most of them are spam. The best way to protect your blog from spam is using Akismet and captcha plugins for your comments. To have both plugins installed is a good thing.
2. Sitemaps Plugins
There are many SEO tips and tricks that help in optimizing a site but one of those, the importance of which is sometimes underestimated is sitemaps. To have a plugin that generates sitemap for you has many benefits not only it gives easier navigation but the most important is it gives better visibility of your content to search engines. It also help you automatically generate your dynamic contents and the best way to inform search engines immediately about any changes on your site.
3. SEO Plugins
Search engine optimization is a very important building block in online marketing, blogs, websites, etc. To have a blog that is search engine optimized will take you ahead from the competition. Look for SEO plugin that gives you control over title tags, noindex/nofollow, meta tags, rich snippets, slugs, canonical tags, autolinks, 404 errors etc.
4. Plugins for Sharing
Plugins to let your visitor share your post to other social networking sites like facebook, google+, twitter and bookmarking sites should not be missed. To give your reader an easy way to share your post is another intelligent approach to have massive amount of traffic. Not just traffic of course but it will also give you potential loyal readers.
5. Plugins that will Make your reader Come back
I am a blog hopper most of the time and i often comment on blogs that i think is should. That makes me a reader. For me as a reader will appreciate if i will be notified if someone has submitted a comment on the same article or my previous comments to a site. This is why to have a plugin like this is important.
This plugin will also drive traffic to your site and make your reader go back which will definitely make them active.
That’s it for now. Just remember that installing lots of plugins in your blog will affect your site’s page load and will definitely affect your site performance either the ranking or reader’s satisfaction.
Let me here from you on the comments of the plugins that i missed. 
