Surprisedly enough for me, with all the long and numerous lists of WordPress plugins out there, I never see those 4 listed anywhere. Although, to me they all are very useful and you should definitely check them out.

1. Admin Menu Editor

Doesn't everybody wish to re-order the WordPress admin menus and change the default backend into a more logical and customized interface? Well, whenever I have to deal with a user interface, one of the most essential needs to me is just that: customization.

The great, mighty, Admin Menu Editor, gives you the ability to change the WordPress admin menus to your liking with a cool drag-and-drop feature.

Strangely enough, I didn't find another plugin that does that, and it really strikes me that such a feature, re-ordering menus, may not be a basic need for all the WordPress users out there. Seriously, how can one leave without that option? I can't. And that makes Admin Menu Editor the number one WordPress plugin to me.

It is especially helpful when using WordPress a a CMS, and you create new content types. For example, you may want to order the menus in a logical way and keep them visually separated, like I use to.

Get the plugin at the official repository.

2. WassUp

WassUp is a very cool plugin that gives you real-time information about current visitors browsing your website and what pages they are visiting, and It keeps a history of the whole activity it monitors. You can choose to display or not spiders and/or spams.

For some reason, I find myself using it more than Google Analytics.

Even thought, WassUp gives you very basic traffic information, I love the plugin for the real-time "spying" factor.

Get the plugin at the official repository.

3. AStickyPostOrderer

This was my life safer for Stylozero. A Sticky Post Orderer is a very nice plugin that allows you to customize and choose the order in which posts are displayed on different categories, and on the blog index page, if you want.

I used it for the portfolio section (yes, portfolio items are posts!), and it just gives me total freedom about the sorting order for portfolio items in each portfolio category (identity, web, print, …).

If you use WordPress as a CMS, this plugin may turn very useful for you.

Get the plugin at the official repository.

4. Smart Archives Reloaded

The name of this plugin says it all. If you want to build an archivation for posts based on year/month sorting, this plugin may be what you need.

I know that there are so many ways of handling archives without having to add a plugin just for that, and I am one of those who try to keep WordPress plugins at a strict minimum.

But I think the plugin has its value in the cool Ajax option that enables the user to display all posts in a fast and easy way, within a selected year and month. You can check it out on my archives page.

Get the plugin at the official repository.