Web2make recommends 10 must have Drupal modules.
Drupal is one of the most flexible, modular and customizable open source Content Management Framework (CMF) powering thousands of websites. With more than 4000 contributed modules it is not an easy task to get started. Therefore web2make made a list of 10 must have Drupal modules.
1. Views
The Views module provides very easy to use user interface to create all kind of SQL queries you need.
This tool is essentially a smart query builder that, given enough information, can build the proper query, execute it, and display the results. Views can be used to generate reports, create summaries, and display collections of images and other content.
This module lets you add custom fields to node types. What are the fields? For example textarea, file upload, selection box are just a few examples of fields.
Administration menu module provides a theme-independent administration interface (aka. navigation
, back-end
) for Drupal. When activated, this module will add administration drop-down menus to the top of your website (only visible by the admin, or those will sufficient privileges). This module will increase your efficiency by lowering the number of clicks it takes to reach certain administer pages.
Base Drupal installation leaves user with simple textarea for data entry. If you want to do something more than a pure text, you can write HTML tags. But most probably your client won’t want to be adding html tags to its content. Most people would rather use any sort of visual text editor then adding tags manually. WYSIWYG (What you See is What you Get) is perfect solution!
Wysiwyg module allows you to use client-side editors to edit content in Drupal. It simplifies installation and integration of editors and allows to assign an editor to each input format.
Webform allows for easy creation of webforms.Typical uses for Webform are questionnaires, contact or request/register forms, surveys, polls or a front end to issues tracking systems.
Submissions from a webform are saved in a database table and can optionally be mailed to a nominated e-mail address upon submission. Past submissions are viewable for users with the correct permissions.
With FileField module it has never been easier to add file upload feature to your Drupal website. FileField is actually add-on module for CCK.It provides a universal file upload CCK field. It is a robust alternative to Drupal core's Upload module and an absolute must for users uploading a large number of files.
What is FileField for uploading files, ImageField is for uploading images. Beside basic image upload ImageField offers features such as multiple images per node, resolution restrictions, default images, and extensive Views support.
By default Drupal creates links that looks like node/1234. This is not very professional or good looking for your clients. Drupal has a Path core module that allows you to add aliases and create "nicer" URLs but you will have to do it one by one! Pathauto comes useful in here. This module automatically generates path aliases for various kinds of content (nodes, categories, users) without requiring the user to manually specify the path alias.
Most of today websites have drop-down menus. By default Drupal doesn't have this option. Nice Menus module enables drop-down/right/left expandable menus. It uses only CSS for most browsers, with minimal Javascript for IE6.
The Content Template (a.k.a. ConTemplate) module is user interface for easy modification of Drupal's node templates. Instead of having to create template files (node.tpl.php) files, now we can do it inside Drupal interface.
These templates use PHP code and all of the node object variables are available for use in the template. An example node object is displayed and it is as simple as clicking on its properties to add them to the current template.
