There are many resources out there that offer best practices, tips, instructions and plug-in advice for WordPress. When I relaunched this blog, I had a chance to take a closer look at a lot of those resources and apply some of them to this blog.  Here are the top resources I used/consulted when building this blog:

Security / Administration

• 13 Vital Tips and Hacks to Protect Your WordPress Admin Area
• The Ultimate Guide to Setting up WordPress after an Install
• 10 Killer WordPress Hacks
• 10 ways to make your wordpress theme look like pro
• 10 Tips to Improve Your WordPress Theme

Performance

• 10 Ways to Speed up Your WordPress Blog
• 18 Useful Tricks To Speed Up WordPress & Boost Performance
• Optimize WordPress Performance with the wp-config.php File

Plug-Ins

• 45+ Essential WordPress Plugins for Pro Blogging
• 20 New, Useful And Promising WordPress Plugins
• Top 10 WordPress Plugins to Promote Your Social Media Profiles
• Go social with these WordPress plug-ins
• 11 Hawt WordPress Plugins I’ve Fallen In Love With
• Essential Plugins For Your WordPress Blog
• 15+ Sites To Get Widgets For Your Blog

I’d also like to share some of the additional plug-ins I use to run this blog:

• Disqus (Commenting system)
• SexyBookmarks (Social sharing plug-in)

I hope these resources will be as helpful to you as they’ve been to me. Feel free to share any other resources that you think are handy!

Photo credit: Mike Kemp