The Beautiful Game.

I give you Garrincha's Dog.

This is the first time I've ever seriously tried Wordpress, as a user or a developer, and I have to say that it's a very nice system. My only issue with its autoparagraph function which I can't get to play nicely when there's explicit html formatting present.

Here's the list of plugins I've found to be pretty much essential.

1. Autop remover - See above. Although I later realised that Markdown does this too.
2. Markdown - A much better system of formatting posts, IMHO.
3. WPcontact form - because y'gotta be able to receive hatemail somehow.
4. Optimal Title - I much prefer reversed page titles where the article title comes before the site title.
5. Category Tagging - allows the basic wp_categories model to be used in the Web 2.0 taggy way we all know and love.
6. X-Valid - It's not so much for validating the posts as it is for the comments. I don't want the site to be broken by an unclosed tag that I have no control over.
7. Akismet - Leftbrained is mostly ignored by comment spammers, probably because it's a unique system and therefore not as attackable by robots. I'm aware that a Wordpress blog is VERY identifiable and therefore much more susceptible to comment spam. If Akismet is as good as I've heard then spam shouldn't be a problem.

Anyway, read and (hopefully) enjoy.