March Meetup Wiki Notes

Thanks to everyone who added and edited notes from the March Meetup. Read more for the detailed roundup.

Melissa presented
Menu Subtree Permissions, which you can use to control unwieldy menus by limiting who can add items to a menu parent based on their role.

An alternative to Menu Subtree Permissions is Menu Admin per Menu, which allows roles to control specific menus rather than items and sub-items on a larger menu. One module or the other might be more appropriate depending on the use case.

Grant (grantkruger) Presented:

• Administration menu - admin_menu: This module is a standard for most developers. It puts your administration menus in a bar across the top of your page for easy access, making for much faster site development. It also provides a configuration option to make the module fieldsets on the module administration page to be collapsed by default.
• Admin - admin: While the above module is suited to more advanced users, some users prefer something simpler, nicer to look at and intuitive. The Admin module does this by providing UI improvements to the standard Drupal admin interface. Some people say it's like a Mac and other say it's like Wordpress. What it does is improve the admin interface for less technical users. To achieve this it also creates its own theme (Slate), but in an inventive non-standard way that still has a couple of wrinkles. Set your admin theme to Slate if you use this, or follow instructions at the module for another theme of your choice.
• Vertical Tabs - vertical_tabs: You know how folks often complain about those mile-long drupal forms? This module fixes that in such an elegant way that it is going to be in Core for Drupal 7 onwards. It sucks much of the admin forms into a side-tab structure with dynamic tab names, making the forms shorter, easier to use and nicer to look at. This applies, amongst other things, to editing nodes, blocks and CCK types. Configuration options allow you to choose which form elements to include in the Vertical Tabs structure.
• Filter Permissions - filter_perms: Too many roles and too many modules/content can make the permissions page a nightmare. This module lets you filter the permissions page by role/s and by module/Content, making it much simpler and more manageable.
• Module Filter - module_filter: Add a bunch of modules and your modules page becomes enormous and cumbersome. This filter will allow you to have an autocomplete search for your modules. As you type your module list automatically thins to only show modules that match your text. It also has an option to group your modules into tabs.
• Content Management Filter - cmf: If you, like many of us, find the node list at /admin/content/node too limited, then this module will give you an out-of-the-box alternative with a lot more options. If you want more control and some additional functionality, consider using Views Bulk Operations (VBO), which will allow you to use Views to build the node list you would like. An add-on to VBO is Views Type Block, which will help you bring order to the chaos that is the blocks page.
• Formfilter - formfilter: A module that lets you customize which form elements only user 0 sees. For example, if you don't want any of your content maintainers to even see XML Sitemap options, or a CCK field, or what have you, then this module will let user 0 turn them off for everyone else. Having shown that, I just revisited Node form columns - nodeformcols and it is looking like it will be a much better option.
• Better Formats - better_formats: This module lets you add a lot more flexibility to Drupal's core input format system. It will let you specify which input formats are allowed for a content type and it will also let you set the defaults by role. Coupled with the Wysiwyg module, you can even have different Wysiwyg options by role.
• Backup and Migrate - backup_migrate: This module lets you make database backups from your admin interface. You can make backups any time, or you can schedule backups to be created when cron runs. At any time you can restore your site to one of those backups. It has a very powerful and extremely intuitive interface. Backups can be downloaded or saved on the site. BAckups can also be very selective, so you don't have to back up non-Drupal tables or cache tables.
• Diff: I should have mentioned this module. It works with the core node revisions. Want to know what it does? Well, make sure you're signed on... then click on the Revisions tab above this wiki. Cool huh? It lets you see the difference between any two revisions in an easy-to-read side-by-side layout... and it works out of the box. No config options, just download it and turn it on.

Dean Presented:
Teleport - A nice little node-finder module. The user can select a keystroke in the module configuration, which will open a modal dialog box. The dialog box provides a text field with auto-complete functionality that one can use to look up nodes. The module configuration allows one to select the node fields on which to search. You can search for node titles, urls (actual or alias) and can configure to search also for users and taxonomy if desired. It has its own perm so you can define you can access it by role.

Other modules presented or mentioned include:
(typed here as placeholders for their own comments)

• ImageCache (with Lightbox2 or Thickbox) - Really a must-have on any site with images. Soooo powerful.

  A good complement to Imagecache is Imagecache Actions, which extends the capabilities of Imagecache to allow one to create presets that change image color, brightness, file format, as well as add overlays, rounded corners, alpha transparency masks, and many other features.

• Image Resize Filter - Fantastic module to aid in adding images to nodes, like blogs. Helps by also controlling the file size of the images automatically. Fantastic module.
• Cufon allows one to set up font definitions, and then use those definitions to generate images of text rendered on-the-fly when the content creator or a user types the text. This automagically allows search engines to index the text, but allows your text to be rendered in an aesthetically pleasing way.
• HTTP authentication Useful HTTP authentication module (although it seems that the 6.x branch of this module is deprecated in favor of the Secure Site module version 6.x-2.1 and up). From the perspective of end users, this authentication method allows one to log in using dialog box displayed by the browser rather than by using a form on the page. One advantage to HTTP authentication for those who password-protect their feed access is that applications such as feed readers can authenticate to view protected pages using this method. One disadvantage is that the user has to completely close the browser window to end a session; the normal logout link does not work.
• Global Redirect (an SEO must-have) - Remove redundant URLs. Instead, have all redundant URLs redirect to a canonical alias for the page path. This pairs nicely with Path Redirect, which redirects users from old page aliases to the current canonical alias.
• Force Password Change - Allows administrators to require users to change their passwords upon logging in. Very handy for user accounts newly-created by the administator.
• Role Delegation and Role Assign modules are two methods of giving users limited administer permissions access.

Also these modules were mentioned for use when you have users creating other users.

• RoleAssign - Restrict which roles a user can assign to new users.
• Role Delegation- Roles that can assign other roles.
• User Protect - Controlling user management and deletion.
• Force Password Change - Force user password resets.