I put together a list of wordpress plugins that are really handy to use when using wordpress as a cms.

1. custom fields template

The Custom Field Template plugin adds the default custom fields on the Write Post/Page. You can add a WYSIWYG editor, dropdown list, checkboxes, file upload, and more to your custom fields to use in your template.

Link: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/custom-field-template/

Support: http://wordpress.org/tags/custom-field-template

2. get the image

Get the Image is a plugin that grabs images for you. It was designed to make the process of things such as adding thumbnails, feature images, and/or other images to your blog much easier, but it’s so much more than that. It is an image-based representation of your WordPress posts.

Link: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/get-the-image/

3. pods

Pods is a Wordpress CMS framework that lets you add and display your own content types.
Unlike WP custom post types, each content type gets its own table.

Link: http://podscms.org/

4. cleaner gallery

Cleaner Gallery was written to take care of the invalid XHTML that WordPress produces when using the shortcode.

It does a bit more than that though. It will integrate with many Lightbox-type scripts and allow you to do much cooler things with your galleries. Plus, it has a couple of extra options that you can play around with.

Link: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/cleaner-gallery/

5. langswitch

The Language Switcher WordPress plugin allows you to create a bilingual or multi-lingual blog or site, using WordPress. The way it works is that you write the content for your site in multiple languages, using special tags to tell the plugin which text goes with which language. You’ll also install “gettext” language files to translate the text generated by your theme, other plugins, and WordPress itself into your target languages. The Language Switcher plugin will then let your site viewers choose a language for viewing your site, and put all the text on the screen into the right language.

Link & support: http://www.poplarware.com/downloads/language_switcher

6. Contact form 7

Contact Form 7 can manage multiple contact forms, plus you can customize the form and the mail contents flexibly with simple markup. The form supports Ajax-powered submitting, CAPTCHA, Akismet spam filtering and so on.

Link: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/contact-form-7/

7. Wordpress breadcrumbs

This plugin allows the use of breadcrumbs in your Wordpress installation. Please refer to the installation instructions for instructions on how to configure your theme to allow for breadcrumbs.

Link: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wordpress-breadcrumbs/