After years of working with WordPress I’d like to keep a list here of the most useful tools that you should be aware of. Some plugins are vital for any WordPress based site, so give this post a good read and please contribute in the comments box.

These free tools are great for both Portfolio sites and in  general for WordPress blogs, hotel sites, company websites – you name it, we have it: everybody can benefit from these general tools.

1. WP Database Backup – if you ever lost some content, you know what it feels like. Better be always prepared – this simple plugin lets you schedule  backups too, so once properly set, you might forget – until you need it.  Not the most complete backup tool available today – but I’ve been using since many years with success.
2. WordPress SEO by Yoast. If you want to be really serious about SEO this is the best plugin avaible today, hands down. It takes care of disabling indexation of useless archives or any other template or specific page you want, and customize the meta tags. A neat preview features lets you understand what will happen in the Google search results when G picks up the entered metadata. Excellent!
3. More Fields. If you are playing with custom fields, you’ll love this plugin, which enables you to build beautiful user interfaces for handling your custom field data.
4. Redirection. If you had a site for more than one year you know managing 301 redirects and 404 errors is always important.
5. Auto Featured Image: Forgot selecting the featured image on lots of posts? Let this plugin do the dirty job for you!
6. AJAX Thumbnail Rebuild: if you change your thumbnail sizes, you need to regenerate thumbnails. This simple tool will allow you to do so. A good alternative in Regenerate Thumbnails.
7. Ozh’ Admin Drop Down Menu
   WordPress 3.3 introduces a nice navigation menu for th WordPress administration panel, but this plugin frees much more space for your actual content, so for better concentration on your content creation process, give this plugin a try.
8. Embedit Pro by SuperThemes
   One stop solution for embedding HTML from custom fields or managing HTML “snippets” you want to use through your site to have multiple instances of  “Buy Now” Paypal button, Contact button, or some content of your choice.