Top 10 Drupal Modules
We’re going to take a break from my long-winded Drupal Tutorial series to have a little fun. I’ve come up with a list of the Top 10 Drupal Modules that are already not installed, or rather at least the most used modules by Drupal heads. So here goes.
1. CCK - Content Construction Kit - The Holy Grail
If you’re a drupaler and you don’t have CCK installed then you are one poor soul. Disclaimer: If you use Flexinode please don’t hate get all hot and bothered. The reason that I chose CCK is because it appears as if Drupal is going towards using CCK for custom content going forward, as can be evidenced in Drupal Version 5. In combination with this point, CCK has the best image attach properties of all the custom content with the imagefield module.
2. Views - If you don’t use Views then your Drupal site is probably very sad.
Views is the module that lets you customize and create webpages and blocks on the fly. For example if you have a website about shoes (like Criticalsole.com) then you can separate pages with shoe articles, shoe pictures, a user’s articles, a user’s sneakers, etc. The best way I can explain it is, if you want to create Flickr clone then Views is the way to go.
3. Tagadelic - Tags are Righteous man!
If you’re designing a Web 2.0 site, shoot, or even a site in 2007 then you absolutely need to have tags. Tagadelic allows your users, and you, the ability to freely tag any post they create. A must for any user-generated content site, that means you too bloggers.
4. Path and Pathauto - SEO out of the box
If you’re like 99.97% of web publishers then your very livelyhood probably depends heavily on Google and other small search engines (yeah I’m talking to you Ask.com, c’mon hook a brother up with some search queries). Anyhow install Pathauto, get Wordtracker, and SEO to your heart’s content. Path and Pathauto are a must if you’re expecting the search engines to start giving you some love.
5. Organic Groups (OG) - Because people love to hang out together
This one is self explanatory. People like to hang out with like-minded people, organic groups allows this. If you’ve ever seen Myspace groups then this is the same thing but much better because Myspace is ugly. Nuff said.
6. Buddylist - Because everyone needs a friend
Buddylist is the module that helped put Drupal on the map. Being able to create Facebook and Myspace clones solely from the existing Drupal install and the buddylist module is entirely possible now. Install buddylist and now all your users can start adding friends and keeping track of their friend’s posts. Warning: buddylist has a lot of little hacks that are not easily found on the Drupal website so be patient and just keep searching you’ll eventually find the hack that allows people to reject friend requests. Or wait a week or so and I’ll just lay it out here.
7. Privatemsg - Keeping Secrets like the CIA
Like the name says, allowing your users to privatemsg each other is huge. Trust me on this one, though be forewarned if your site gets remotely good traffic as the founding web designer your inbox will get full.
8. Guestbook - The “Yo where you at?” module
Friendster started the whole testimonial thing and if you’re building a social network it’s a must have. This is huge for user interaction and overall gives you as the founder a nice way to say hi to your new users. I’ll post how to modify and style the guestbook a bit later. You’ll want to style the guestbook, it’s not the prettiest interface in the world.
9. Logintoboggan - No I do not want to confirm my registration via email
If you’re like me then you get annoyed by all the other websites that make you confirm your email address before you can sign into your account. As someone that has upteen accounts and is always evaluating new web 2.0 companies this causes a significant amount of pain to my brain. Logintoboggan, amongst other things, allows you to have an auto registration slash login. It’s beautiful, install it.
10. Service Links - If a drupal site has no visitors does it exist?
You gotta promote and this is the single easiest way to promote your site. Install service links and you’ll have reddit, digg, del.icio.us, and newsvine links at the bottom of all your nodes. Yeah, maybe this module doesn’t really belong in the Top 10 but c’mon it is pretty cool.
OK, now before you get mad because you didn’t see Aggregator, Profile, or other great modules remember this is a list of modules that DO NOT come with the basic Drupal installation. Feel free to leave comments telling me which modules I completely missed, and which modules you believe deserve props.
cck drupal Facebook flickr google mashups Myspace open source search engines seo top 10 web 2.0 web 20 web publishers wordtrackershare this story
February 22nd, 2007 at 10:51 pm |
It would be helpful for novice if u provide the link to each module as well..
February 23rd, 2007 at 8:25 pm |
No problem but, I’ll post the links.
February 24th, 2007 at 10:21 pm |
Nice List of modules I really had no idea that Drupal was so vast with great assortment of plugins…
February 25th, 2007 at 4:54 am |
Thx. I’d say Drupal is definitely robust. I didn’t add the flash modules here, but you can also incorporate your own flash sections and pages as well.
March 1st, 2007 at 2:18 am |
Thanks very much for the list - and the “8 Drupal articles” post too.
I have a question about Tagadelic, if you don’t mind: How does it differ from the Taxonomy stuff in a regular Drupal install? I thought the Taxonomy feature was already set up to provide similar tagging functionality?
I’m a Drupal n00bie (Dr00bie?), but learning fast; it’s great that there are so many modules available.
March 1st, 2007 at 9:00 am |
“Warning: buddylist has a lot of little hacks that are not easily found on the Drupal website so be patient and just keep searching you’ll eventually find the hack that allows people to reject friend requests. Or wait a week or so and I’ll just lay it out here.”
Would love to see how this is done.. I’ve searched long and hard. Thanks!
March 1st, 2007 at 5:31 pm |
To Chris ->
My apologies, Tagadelic is just a nice little module that allows for a weighted tag list. A lot like the tag clouds on websites that you see often. For Free Tagging the regular Taxonomy install that comes with Drupal should handle that.
To Ahmad ->
I plan on doing a whole article dedicated to the Buddylist Module and I’ll make sure to cover the reject friend request issue.
March 14th, 2007 at 5:19 am |
Hey I was wondering how you got the alternating bg colours for your comments?
March 15th, 2007 at 6:52 am |
To BJ ->
Are you talking about the alternating bg colors on this webpodge? If so, you should be able to find the style.css file and alter that to change the tr tag. If you can not find the tr odd/even tag in the style.css file then look in misc/drupal.css and it should be there. Hope that helps.
March 16th, 2007 at 5:40 pm |
Thanks a lot for all this Drupal info. I developed sites using Joomla and made the switch to Drupal. Your info is the best I’ve seen so far. Keep it up!
March 16th, 2007 at 5:43 pm |
Jose ->
Thanks man, let me know if there is anything you’d like to see posted. I’m working on a Zen-Cart/OSCommerce and Drupal hybrid site right now, so once I get finished with that I’ll post instructions how to do that as well.
March 20th, 2007 at 7:32 am |
Hi
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G’night
March 29th, 2007 at 7:13 am |
Drupal SEO : The top Drupal SEO modules and how to use them…
Drupal has the best out-of-the-box SEO performance of any CMS software that I’ve used, and yet there are a few easy to implement modules that would give an additional boost in Drupal’s SEO performance. Here are the top Drupal modules for Dr…
April 9th, 2007 at 8:46 pm |
[…] webpodges Top 10 Drupal Modules We’re going to take a break from my long-winded Drupal Tutorial series to have a little fun. I’ve come up with a list of the Top 10 Drupal Modules that are already not installed, or rather at least the most used modules by Drupal heads. So here goes. No Related Posts […]
April 21st, 2007 at 1:23 am |
Just want to inform you that, your website couldnot view properly with Opera browser.
May 9th, 2007 at 2:22 pm |
Thanks for this list…I gave you a little click love because of it.
May 16th, 2007 at 7:03 pm |
thx dude! every little bit helps in this blog eat blog world.
May 20th, 2007 at 5:20 pm |
Excellent post but links missing. Should we expect an update with links soon?
August 5th, 2007 at 3:34 pm |
What about views drupal module (http://drupal.org/project/views)?
Btw, nice top ten
August 9th, 2007 at 10:00 am |
All the modules are here on the Drupal site - just click the name tag to see every module available listed alphabetically - you can also filter your search for different versions of drupal http://drupal.org/project/Modules/name
August 31st, 2007 at 8:34 am |
Nice list of top 10 modules, and some of them are not being used by my site. I believe there are more modules that can be included into this Top 10 list. Anyway, it would be nice if you are able to provide the URL link on your article, i.e. readers can click and access the module site quickly (just a 2-cent worth of comment).
September 4th, 2007 at 2:14 pm |
Thanks a lot for all this Drupal info:-)
September 24th, 2007 at 8:25 pm |
[…] webpodge » Blog Archive » Top 10 Drupal Modules I’ve come up with a list of the Top 10 Drupal Modules that are already not installed, or rather at least the most used modules by Drupal heads. (tags: article bestof drupal modules plugins social socialsoftware social-networks programming cms best-practices) […]
December 4th, 2007 at 9:47 pm |
Hey, thanks! this is a great post! I just created a website, www,wallethacker.com using drupal and loving it…
December 4th, 2007 at 9:48 pm |
Hey, thanks! this is a great post! I just created a website, www.wallethacker.com using drupal and loving it…