Five lesser-known -- but great -- WordPress plugins

1. Login LockDown — adds extra secu­rity to WordPress by restrict­ing the num­ber of failed login attempts.

2. SexyBookmarks — sure, there are many ways to add lists of shar­ing icons and links to your posts — but this one is pretty.

3. wp-​​Typography — eas­ily improve the typog­ra­phy on your site, em and en dashes, hyphen­ation, and much more.

4. WP Greet Box — give a sim­ple lit­tle wel­come mes­sage to vis­i­tors com­ing via var­i­ous refer­rers, like Stumbleupon or Digg.

5. WP Minify — com­press CSS and Javascript to speed up page loads. It can be a lit­tle tricky — I find I have to specif­i­cally exclude all 3rd-​​party scripts and stylesheets — but it’s highly effective.