Any suggestions for modules to use on any basic Drupal site?

Posted by susano on August 22, 2013 at 3:47am

Hi! This is Susan. I attended the August meeting since I am looking to build my first Drupal site. I'm interested in downloading some "must" modules that mostly any Drupal site will use so I can familiarize myself with the process and use them as a starting point to build my site.
Jared went through a pretty extensive list (which I admit I failed to note them all,) but does anyone else have suggestions for useful modules too?
Thanks for your help!

Comments

Going through the same thing

Posted by Nogbit on August 22, 2013 at 4:49am

Going through the same thing myself and made a list. There are a couple of good lists online...

https://duckduckgo.com/?t=lm&q=essential+drupal+modules+2013

Easy to use drush vs. all the clicking around...

these as well
https://drupal.org/project/masquerade
https://drupal.org/project/ds
https://drupal.org/project/auto_nodetitle
https://drupal.org/project/field_permissions
https://drupal.org/project/better_exposed_filters

Most installed modules

Posted by jdwalling on August 22, 2013 at 5:24am

There are many lists of favorite contributed modules like these:
* http://www.lullabot.com/blog/podcasts/mike-anello-recommends-his-favorit...
* http://www.deuxcode.com/articles/104/drupal-modules-for-each-install
* http://www.deckfifty.com/blog/2011-04/top-50-drupal-modules
* http://www.mediacurrent.com/blog/jays-top-50-drupal-7-modules
(the list is from 2010 and 2011)

Favorites usually include the most installed modules:
http://tinyurl.com/drupal-contribs

Many of the most installed contributed modules are required by other modules as dependencies.

To see how contributed modules are used, checkout a Distribution that is similar to your purpose: http://tinyurl.com/drupal-distros

Always installed (almost)

Posted by jlockhart on August 22, 2013 at 4:07pm

Always installed (almost) modules:

Admin

https://drupal.org/project/advanced_help - a lot of modules provide additional information using this.
https://drupal.org/project/backup_migrate - easy migration when deving
https://drupal.org/project/content_access - easy fine grain control of the content
https://drupal.org/project/ctools - required by a lot of modules
https://drupal.org/project/module_filter - awesome enhanced module table
site_more_info - a module I made to add organization info (phone, address, etc.) and create 2 blocks, copyright block and the site information block (for contact page).
https://drupal.org/project/rules - simple to complex if -> then -> this
https://drupal.org/project/taxonomy_menu_form - lets admins/content creators create menu links on taxonomy terms like they would on nodes.
https://drupal.org/project/token - required
https://drupal.org/project/views - absolutely required
https://drupal.org/project/libraries - helps control library plugins (ckeditor, plupload etc).

Media

https://drupal.org/project/ckeditor - wysiwyg editor
https://drupal.org/project/colorbox - image popup/slideshow, plus html popup, etc.
https://drupal.org/project/filefield_sources - reuse media from either fields or imce
https://drupal.org/project/filefield_sources_plupload - upload multiple files at one time
https://drupal.org/project/imce - file browser
https://drupal.org/project/imce_mkdir - they can make/delete directories, my handbook emphasizes keeping the server file system clean and organized.
https://drupal.org/project/imce_plupload - multiple upload for imce
https://drupal.org/project/imce_rename - rename files
imce_custom_ui (I made this to reorganize the UI a bit)
https://drupal.org/project/mediaelement - simple html5 audio and video plugin (would really like to see this integrated with IMCE)
https://drupal.org/project/plupload - runs the multiple upload for imce and fields
https://drupal.org/project/transliteration - cleans up file names as they are uploaded, just in case.

AntiSpam/Security

https://drupal.org/project/captcha - simple "are you a robot?" module (not sure its very effective)
https://drupal.org/project/logintoboggan - login enhancements
https://drupal.org/project/recaptcha - extends captcha for the recaptcha project

Entity & Fields

https://drupal.org/project/addressfield
https://drupal.org/project/entity
https://drupal.org/project/entityreference
https://drupal.org/project/field_group - allows the creation of groups of fields with multiple "element" types for display.
https://drupal.org/project/field_tools - allows cloning of fields from one instance to another. Really handy during dev.
https://drupal.org/project/link

SEO

https://drupal.org/project/redirect - manage redirections on the site, enhances pathauto
https://drupal.org/project/globalredirect - looks like this might be redundant now with new redirect functionality, need to review that too.
https://drupal.org/project/metatage - standard & open graph meta tag handling and automatic page title too.
https://drupal.org/project/pathauto - automatic 'human' url creation using tokens
https://drupal.org/project/pathologic - help prevent 'broken' links to media

Often installed

https://drupal.org/project/calendar
https://drupal.org/project/date
https://drupal.org/project/devel
https://drupal.org/project/draggableviews - makes it nice for content managers to organize content.
https://drupal.org/project/easy_breadcrumbs
https://drupal.org/project/follow - nice module for content managers to provide follow links for the site and each user.
https://drupal.org/project/getid3 - gets a media files info
https://drupal.org/project/references - may be redundant with entityreference (need to check that :)
https://drupal.org/project/sharethis - taps into the ShareThis service
https://drupal.org/project/views_accordion - awesome for FAQ pages, use the draggableviews for organization.
https://drupal.org/project/views_slideshow - my 'brochure' site comes with a Slideshow content type, with draggableviews for organization, that cycles a front page Slideshow.
https://drupal.org/project/views_rss - almost all my sites have a basic rss/socialmedia feed where I output link info to be used by the service https://ifttt.com to automatically post updates to Facebook, Twitter, etc.

Webform module

Posted by jcost on August 22, 2013 at 7:52pm

Adding on to these lists...

Webform - can't believe no one has mentioned it yet. It lets the client create their own webforms to collect information. The form can be emailed to someone when it is submitted and all the data is stored in table to download.

https://drupal.org/project/webform

TinyMCE - we use instead of CKEditor, but I think that is just a matter of preference. It's good to standard on one for training purposes.

https://drupal.org/documentation/modules/tinymce

Nice Menus - for creating drop down menus

https://drupal.org/project/nice_menus

Google Analytics - for gathering stats.

https://drupal.org/project/google_analytics