Drupal has always been considered as top-rated CMS for its uniqueness and flexibility. Besides the core features, the collection of different modules makes this CMS special in the website development industry. You will not find a single Drupal-based website that has not integrated modules.
A module is a collective set of PHP, JavaScript and CSS files that boost the website functionality. Modules provide a framework to enhance the features and flexibility of a website so that you can easily customize the digital experience to your user demands. They give Drupal website development an opportunity to enhance the functions, features, as well as the power to complete incredible tasks.
There are thousands of modules available with Drupal, and they are categorized into three types:
Core Modules: They are part of every Drupal installation. For instance, these modules assist in the management of user accounts, content fields, and navigation menus.
Contributed Modules: These modules can be downloaded from Drupal.org but is not present in the Drupal core package.
Custom Modules: These are pretty self-explanatory as they’re coded particularly for the individual projects.
Let’s look at the most contributed and useful modules for a Drupal development company that wants to enhance the client website capabilities. We will look solely at modules for Drupal 8.
1. Entity Browser
The Entity Browser module is a complete savior when it comes to interacting with different digital media. It is a flexible tool that helps in browsing, creating or choosing media files in a smooth and easy manner. With Entity Browser, dragging-and-dropping of multiple files at once can be done as well as enhance the search capabilities. If you’re a fan of WYSIWYG, you’ll be glad that it enables that as well.
2. Views
Views module helps website developer to organize and display the content to the world in different manners; this is great for education industry because it gives opportunity to do multiple things like creating lists showing all assignments a student has finished, that are only available to the student or teacher who is currently accessing the page with its credentials. It allows the teachers and admin department to monitor and schedule daily tasks. It’s a great module that can be integrated without hesitation and is part of all Drupal websites.
3. Panels
Once you hire Drupal developers they use the drag-and-drop feature to build website customized layouts. These layouts are helpful in displaying multiple types of content. Drupal CMS has an additional advantage of actively changing and customizing the content. This feature is quite unique which you’re not going to see with other CMSs for sure. Panels not only help Drupal CMS for building educational websites, but it’s also a great module for every other business website.
4. Delete All
Delete All may just be one of the most efficient modules available for the website users. If you need to clean up a website when facing any system error or are looking to remove dummy content this module is your best buddy. With one click, you can clear all content of a specific node type without having to worry about the pagination or wasting time while scrolling each item.
5. Features
It combines and streamlines the complete process of managing the website elements like a blog, image galleries, e-commerce stores, and a press room. These elements are essential to run an enterprise website, and the Features module removes all the technical issues experienced when handling elements and thereby reduces the developer’s burden.
6. GraphQL
GraphQL is one of the modules that allow you to access content from your Drupal website and easily hand it off to the front-end applications. The biggest advantage of GraphQL is that it gives the requesting application the liberty to ask for things from the Drupal website, rather than the website mentioning what is available. It automatically lowers the time required to request data by grouping queries.
7. Rabbit Hole
With Drupal, there are several content entities to manage. This not only comprises of individual posts but also categorize entities that don’t need to be visible for the website visitors. Nevertheless, Drupal by default creates URLs to those entities, that only host partial content which in reality is only used somewhere else. This module allows easy creation of redirecting that makes the content inaccessible, making the website cleaner, for the users.
Frequently Asked Questions
1. What are the modules in Drupal?
A Drupal module is a collection of files containing some functionality and is written in PHP. Since the module code executes within the site context, it can use all the functions and access all variables and structures of the Drupal CMS.
2. What are the core modules?
They are part of every Drupal installation. For instance, these modules assist in the management of user accounts, content fields, and navigation menus.
3. Where do we upload contributed modules in Drupal?
The modules folder at the top level of your Drupal installation is reserved for Drupal core modules. So, you should generally create a sites/all/modules directory and place uploaded modules there.
Wrapping Up:
These above-discussed modules are some of the most demanding modules that work very well for Drupal-based websites. In addition to that Drupal CMS also offers other modules that are less popular overall but happen to work quite well for enterprise websites. Drupal module development demand is growing at a rapid pace and many business enterprises are approaching the platform. Drupal being an Open-Source, secure and top-rated CMS is making a good impact in the web development world.
