WordPress is the preferred CMS for a lot of bloggers, both amateur and professional alike. Part of the appeal of WordPress is the ability to customize and manage the platform through a series of plug-ins and other tweaks. Listed below are some of the best and most valuable WordPress plug-ins of 2008.

1. Akismet – This is not exactly a new WordPress plug-in anymore, but if you only run one plug-in on your blog, Akismet is an absolute must-have. Without it, your blog will be literally inundated with mountains of spam comments.

2. Comment Approval Notification – Developed by our good friend Matt Freedman, this sends out a notification email when a comment gets approved through the moderation queue. This serves as a reminder to the visitor to come back and visit your blog again.

3. CommentLuv – In an effort to encourage more comments on your blog, you may consider using this plug-in that provides a link to the commentator’s most recent blog post.

4. Smart Archives – You don’t want your hard work to disappear into obscurity, right? With Smart Archives, visitors to your blog can more easily access some of your older material, rather than fumbling through the full text of every post.

5. No Self Pings – While it is important to deeplink to your own blog articles, you may not want these trackbacks to show up in the comment section. This plug-in prevents self-pings from appearing.

6. If Older Than – Would you like to treat your older posts differently than the more recent ones? Perhaps you’d like to monetize those more so that you can keep a better user experience with the current stuff. This plugin lets you do that.

7. Social Profiles – We all have multiple presences on the ‘net, so why not encourage even more comments on your blog by letting visitors feature their social networking profiles. This way, they not only get love for their blog, but also for their Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, and so on.

8. KeywordLuv – Further continuing with the task of increasing visitor interaction, this allows the “name” in the comment field to be replaced by a keyword instead. If you institute a dofollow strategy on your blog, this provides even more incentive for visitors to leave a comment.

9. My Top Commentators – Keeping track of who leaves the most comments on your blog can be a bit of a challenge, but this plugin tracks all of that information for you. Month-end roundup posts are a lot easier as a result.

10. WpTouch – People don’t just surf the Internet on their computers. They do it on their iPhones too, so this integrated plug-in and theme make any blog much more iPhone-friendly.