Ad Rotator – rotate ads anywhere on your site

This is actually the newest plugin added to Marketing Pilgrim. It allows me to set up simple text files with multiple ads in each. I then reference the text files anywhere in the blog template and the plugin will rotate between the ads found in the text file. Before using this plugin, I could only offer advertisers the option to manually switch out ad creatives every 2-4 weeks.

CompariPress – Everytime a purchase is made

After installing this premium WordPress plugin into your WP blog you’ll be able to easily pull product information across different sources to compare prices like popular comparision pricing websites (e.g. ShopZilla, Shopping.com). When a visitor clicks on the “buy” or “info” button, they’ll be directed to the seller (e.g. Amazon, Overstock, Buy.com, etc.) where they can purchase the item. Everytime a purchase is made, you’ll receive a commission for it!

wpSecurityScan – Essential part of defending your blog

This plugin is an essential part of defending your blog from hackers. It will scan your blog’s setup and advise how to make it more secure by making your password stronger, ensuring you have the correct file permissions, changing database prefixes, etc. A must have for any WordPress blogger!

FeedFooter – little messages at the bottom of your feed

FeedFooter has so many great uses. On MP we use it to display ads at the bottom of every RSS feed item. On other blogs I use it to place copyright information and backlinks–to try and stop spammers from scraping the feed.

Force Word Wrapping – cos some words are too long

Have you ever seen a 40 character URL posted on a blog, stretch across into the sidebar. Looks ugly, doesn’t it? You won’t ever see that on MP, thanks to this plugin which forces word-wrapping.

Shortcode Kid – Allows you to include more than 100 different design elements

This premium plugin, onced installed, allows you to include more than 100 different design elements (buttons, text highlighting, image sliders, page formatting, etc) to your blog post on the fly with their ready-made shortcodes. For those of you who wants nice user interface but lack of design and coding experience, this is a plugin you might want to take a look at.

Gravity Forms – Build and publish your WordPress forms

Build and publish your WordPress forms in just minutes. No drudgery, just quick and easy form-building. Select your fields, configure your options and easily embed forms on your WordPress powered site using the built-in tools. That’s way more satisfying (and less fattening) than a peanutty candy bar any day.

LifeStream – This nifty little plug-in enables you to stream content

This nifty little plug-in enables you to stream content from your social platforms across the social waves to your website by leveraging RSS /Atom feeds. It offers more than a pretty look though as it’s also efficient and won’t bog down your website.  It also enables easy customization without a lot of PHP code modifications. This is a favorite for my developers.

Billboard –Create a set of social share icons

This  plug-in lets you create a set of social share icons, bookmark icons or links to other pages in a nice little widget.  You can choose each icon, insert the url and choose the size of icon all within the widget.  Once developed you simply drag and drop it to your theme widget, select how many of the icons you want to display, if you want it centered or justified to left or right and you’re done.  I love the fact I can make unique billboards for each page if I want.  I often create one for bookmarks and one for social share icons.

No Self Pings – does exactly what it says on the tin

Here at Marketing Pilgrim, we inter-link our own posts heavily. Without this plugin, we’d have dozens of trackback/pingbacks from our own blog each day. This prevents them from showing up in our comments section.

Show Top Commentators – just add water for instant comments

How do you get your readers to leave comments? Add this plugin and you can reward your most vocal commenters with a non-nofollowed backlink to the site of their choice. Options allow you to reset the list every day, week, or month and you can also decide how many to show. A word of warning. While this does help to kick-start the comments on your site, you WILL attract more spammers–hoping to leave comments as “Viagra” and such. You’ll need to police your list, but the plugin also allows you to filter out those commenters that abuse this plugin.

Theme Tester – behind the scenes theme switching

This plugin was a life-saver during our re-design. It allowed us (Admins) to view the new WordPress theme, while every other blog reader saw the existing design. The next time you test a new theme, you can do so without risking your audience see the experiment!

DDSlider – features EVERYTHING that the jQuery plugin

DDSliderWP features EVERYTHING that the jQuery plugin already offered PLUS a custom admin panel, with total management of slides.

WP Geo Tagger – Add your current location

The WP Geo Tagger plugin can be used to add your current location to posts or to add an event location, so your readers can get directions in a snap. It even integrates Google Maps right on your posts!

E-Mail Encrypter – Allows you to define short codes

This plugin allows you to define short codes that can be used in your WordPress posts, pages and text widgets to encrypt email addresses and mailto links, to help reduce spam bots from scraping them from your website.

WP Greet Box – It creates a custom greetting

This is another one of my favorites.  It creates a custom gretting based on the referral url of your website visitor.  Includes support for RSS, Delicious, Digg, Twitter, Facebook and many more.  A must have for any blog or website in my opinion!

Dynamic Headers – Blog header up to new possibilities

Open your blog header up to new possibilities with this plug-in.  You are no longer limited by media type, or only one header for the whole site. Now you can have a unique header for each page!

Extended Google Analytics – With Extended Analytics

With Extended Analytics you’re given Dashboard stats for key page events and traffic data. Additionally if you run an AdSense account it’s possible to tie in your earnings ID targeting keywords for ad links.

WP-Notable – share, and share alike

There are lots of “share this” plugins available. You know, the ones that allow your readers to submit a post to Digg or StumbleUpon. I’ve used this one for years, but it doesn’t matter which flavor you use, just use it!

OK, now your turn. Why not share the love by leaving a link to your favorite WordPress plugin? C’mon spill the beans on that one plugin you think gives your blog an advantage.