As a site builder you already know the right sequence of steps to carry out when you build a site with Drupal, right? You first set it up and running, next you get your hands dirty and configure all the right options for adding some basic or extra functionality to it! The question that arise then is: “How much functionality?”
Do you stick to creating content types, defining roles and permissions, creating menus and lists or do you aim for more? And supercharge it with an entire bundle of functionalities, turning it into a powerful beast?
Well, sky is the limit in Drupal when it comes to functionality! There's a whole boatload of Drupal modules out there and in this post I'm going to point out 15 key modules to add to your own toolbox as a Drupal site builder before you jump on the next project. Here it goes:
1. Multiple Selects
How about making the future content manager's life easier (or yours, if you're running a “one man show”) by adding this module/functionality to your next Drupal website?
2. Vertical Tabs Config
This module comes with “extra power” (so, it's more about empowering the end user here, then about “extra functionality added to the website) for the people administrating and managing content on a Drupal site.
It empowers you/them to control the order of your vertical Drupal tabs (according to roles and content types) and to decide which ones get displayed and which ones get hidden.
You get to put together your preferred tab order by simply using the drag and drop interface and to hide the “unnecessary” tabs via the add/edit node pages. Easy peasy!
3. Mass Password Reset
Now consider these two possible scenarios:
- You're a Drupal site's admin and you're dealing with a security issue on your website. What do you do? Well, you immediately reset all your users' passwords and notify them all via email.
- You're getting ready to launch a new Drupal site, but meanwhile there still are some issues to be solved in the test environment. So, you add your current content and all your users' pre-created accounts to your test environment without sending them all emails (not just yet) informing them of their new accounts.Once you're done with your tests and your social internet goes live, you get to notify all your users, at once, via an email including a password recovery link, as well.
As you've probably already guessed: it's this module here, the Mass Password Reset, that enables you (and any other person in your team having an “administrator user” type of permission) to reset all the users' passwords and to send them all notifying emails.
Moreover, you can edit your email's content from the Configuration Page in your Account Settings!
4. Custom Search
Seize the chance to fine-tune your Drupal search! To enable your Drupal site's visitors to properly filter and refine their search results!
Now you no longer need to settle for the basic search options (e.g. which input type to use, which content type(s) to search) when you build a site with Drupal. Since the Custom Search module provides you with an entire list of advanced options to select from for putting together your own customized Drupal search engine.
Let me list just a few of them:
- include advanced search criteria
- add a filter to the results page
- customize your submit button (why not change that “standard” text or even replace it with an image instead?)
- tune your default search box label
- add a filter to the results page
- set a default text in the search box
- include a test of your choice in the search box
5. Better Login, A Module to Consider When You Build a Site with Drupal
Now isn't this a discouraging “reality” that you need to comply with when you build a site with Drupal: most of your login forms ar part of the site's theme!
In other words: close to zero chances for you to customize their layouts.
Well, there's good news: the Better Login module enables you to do precisely that! Using template overrides (the module comes with three page templates) you get to style your password/login/registration screens to your liking!
6. Password Policy
Is there a specific password policy that you need to set up on the Drupal website that you're building?
Then this module comes in handy!
It provides you with a whole list of constraints that users should be aware of when creating their passwords. If I am to name just a few of them:
- uppercase
- digit
- letter
- length
- punctuation
- character types
- letter/digit (alphanumeric)
7. Realistic Dummy Content
This modules comes as a result to some of the Devel module's well-known drawbacks. It doesn't replace it, yet it efficiently complements it!
Devel delivers you color blocks and node article images, resulting in an unrealistic picture of how your Drupal site would be looking, in the end. Instead, the Realistic Dummy Content module “spoils” you with user pictures and texts. And you just can't ignore this"refinement", in terms of dummy content, when you build a site with Drupal now can you?
The generated dummy content will be made of stock photos and portraits, so you'll get a much more “authentic” look and feel of your Drupal website.
Testing your themes and modules (and other parts of your future Drupal site that need testing) in a dummy development environment will never be the same again!
8. D8 Editor Advanced Link
Here's a useful module to “further refine” your whole link management experience with!
Why should you make do with the standard link Dialog in Drupal 8, with its basic attributes, when you can easily extend them, add new ones?
“New ones” such as:
- id
- title
- class
- target
- rel
9. Auto Purge Users, A Useful Module When You Build a Site with Drupal
This will turn out to be a key module in your toolbox especially when it's a Drupal social intranet project that you're working on!
If, otherwise, the fact that the user lists are usually almost completely ignored in Drupal wouldn't bother you so much, in case of a social intranet such a “detail” can turn into an major issue.
We're talking about lots of inactive users that don't get blocked after a long period of inactivity and who might lead to overhead and certain security threats.
And here is where the Auto Purge Users module comes in to “save the say”!
What it does is that it checks inactivity (based on certain criteria) and it automatically purges the inactive users that it “detects”.
And speaking of these “criteria”, they are the following:
- user accounts that never got activated post registration
- a long period of time during which users haven't logged in to the website
- users have exceeded the configured period of inactivity
10. Password Strength
“But, haven't you just pointed out to me the Password Policy module?” you might be asking yourself right now.
It's true, but since the modules you use depend a loton the nature of each site that you build with Drupal, I still felt that I should recommend you the Password Strength module, as well.
For this will turn out to be really useful when you need to build a site with Drupal where there's for no request for a specific “fine-tuned” password policy. Where, on the contrary, the default password checks come only to affect the overall user experience.
So, what does this module do?
Well, instead of constantly checking if the password that a user creates follow the “classy” rules (to have a certain number of characters, to include capital letters or not, symbols or not etc.) it calculates the time a brute force would need for retrieving that password.
The so called “entropy calculation”.
And here are the patterns that this module looks for during this “calculation”:
- whether the user typed in a standard sequence of characters ("1234" or "abcd")
- whether the user typed in common words, that appear in a standard dictionary or surnames
- dates or years
- whether the user typed in a word taken from a standard dictionary, but wrote it in the “Leet” alphabet
And I think I shall stop here for today. Stay tuned for the second part of this post!
In the meantime make some room in your toolbox for 5 more modules to rely on when you build a site with Drupal!