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Useful Drupal modules
Click on the module name for notes, comments, patches.
Recommendations (for and against) are my personal opinion only and may be out of date. Feel free to email with corrections/suggestions.
Why doesn't the table mention Drupal 9 or 10?
1. Nowadays, I try and use Drupal as little as possible. Specifically I do not recommend it for a new website. I'd also strongly caution you against choosing Drupal if you're at the beginning of your career and trying to learn web development (front / back / full stack) or just want to manage/maintain a website. More details why by email on request.
2. By February 2022 I'd updated all the sites I look after to Drupal 9 (experience: mixed). As of March 2023, a year later, none of them were fully ready for Drupal 10 (waiting on support for various modules). By 13 Nov 2023 (a week or two after D9 lost support) I had updated a couple of them.
Q: What's the Drupal 9 to 10 upgrade experience like? A: it's what I'd describe as "just bearable", slightly better than D8 to D9, though with plenty of things to still trip you up. There is still deprecated code that needs fixing in D10 modules, and policy changes mean odd things will break (be prepared to turn off Aggregate CSS/JS files if your themes stop working, and note that Drush launcher doesn't work with Drush 12...)
Admittedly the upgrade_status module is the best solution they could have come up with for tracking compatibility. Also watch out for a nasty session headers bug with redirect_after_login.
What about sites still running Drupal 7? In short I still recommend leaving them on Drupal 7 or moving to another platform entirely. My prediction was that Drupal will extend D7 support year after year (note that drupal.org itself is still running D7). It's now been confirmed as 5 Jan 2025. There will have to be some sort of third-party long term support, because of the sheer volume of sites that are not being upgraded.
Your decision is really what specifically you think you will gain from Drupal 8/9/10 - often the answer will be not enough, and one of the main hassles - apart from converting each content type one at a time, and setting up a new theme, will be recreating all your views by hand, as views can't be automatically upgraded.
(134 modules in list)| Name | D8 Sort descending | Personally Tested | Last Updated |
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| Group (group) | ✔ | ✖ | |
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Alternative to the Organic Groups module. Allows you to create groups - e.g. classes, subscriptions, multiple communities. Drupal module of the week post. Blog post. It is by all accounts solidly written, but I found the initial UI confusing (in a "so what do I do now?" way) - you probably need to watch the YouTube video to understand it. |
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| Features (features) | ✔ | ✖ | |
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Not recommended Update: most people are now moving away from features. There is a Configuration Management initiative under discussion in Drupal 8. Package up selected configuration for "features" (e.g. a blog or a photo gallery etc.) for reuse on other sites. Not the same as the new D8 Config sync, which is for exchanging configs between different environments of the same site and requires a cloned DB sharing the same UUIDs. |
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| Web Profiler (webprofiler) | ✔ | ✔ | |
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"Essential" Install the devel module first. The profile is a toolbar at the bottom of the screen. Features:
Tip: there are further reports ("collectors") you can turn on in the module preferences, and there's a shortcut to these from the menu in the first icon (Drupal logo). The toolbar is only a summary, all icons are clickable to view a full report. Each report is saved in the DB for later reading. This module was ported from Symfony |
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| @font-your-face (fontyourface) | ✔ | ✔ | |
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Not recommended For using typekit, google fonts etc. But it's simpler to do web fonts manually in Twig templates/CSS. 28 Aug 2018: can't be uninstalled cleanly. The method described in #24 here works: https://www.drupal.org/project/fontyourface/issues/2916712#comment-12751073 if for example, you get an "The "font" entity type does not exist." message when running drush cr |
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| Config Ignore (config_ignore) | ✔ | ✔ | |
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"Essential" Selectively ignore configuration entries during an import - e.g. site settings / the system.maintenance message. |
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| Google Authenticator login (ga_login) | ✔ | ✔ | |
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"Essential" Use in conjunction with tfa to support OATH based HOTP/TOTP systems. Nov 2022: No longer needed (i.e. uninstall it) when you upgrade to tfa 2.x for Drupal 9 and 10. |
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| reCAPTCHA (recaptcha) | ✔ | ✔ | |
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"Essential" Use in conjunction with the Captcha module to prevent spam on forms. Tested with D7 and D8. Patch needed for AJAX forms (e.g. Webforms with AJAX support turned on) to stop the ReCAPTCHA UI disappearing when page is reloaded. |
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| PDF Reader (pdf_reader) | ✔ | ✔ | |
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Render a file field with one of several PDF readers. Mixed success with pdf.js support - seems to force a full screen view. |
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| IMCE (imce) | ✔ | ✔ | |
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Adds a file browser to the CKEditor link dialog, so you can select files that have already been uploaded. Settings in Admin > Config > Media. In many cases will be better IA to add a dedicate file field to the content type and use that, or wait for the new media browser (currently being designed, follow the Drupal UX group.) |
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| Module builder (module_builder) | ✔ | ✔ | |
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"Essential" Add a UI to easily create scaffolding for new modules (including hooks, plugins, permissions etc.) NB: first, you need to download drupal-code-builder from GitHub and place it in a /libraries top-level directory (see module builder's README.txt). You can preview and edit the output files before writing to disk - and each module's configuration is saved as a node, so you can add another hook etc. at a later date, regenerate the files and copy/paste the extra things you need. Video walkthrough. |
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| CKEditorHeight (ckeditorheight) | ✔ | ✔ | |
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Makes CKEditor fields respect the "rows" setting of the fields. (Has to be converted to pixels - there's a global setting, configured via a pixel factor and offset.) |
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| Role Delegation (role_delegation) | ✔ | ✔ | |
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Ordinarily, if you grant a user "Administer Users", they can do everything *except* change the roles (they don't even see the checkboxes). You could give them 'Administer Permissions', but that also allows them to do other things. This module lets you set which roles they are allowed to enable for a user. Administrators still see the roles checkboxes in the usual place (below 'status' on /user/123/edit), but everyone gets a new 'Roles' tab. Works with D8 but not updated since April 2016. Patches: I'm not using any patches, but there are a couple RTBC-ed the queue.
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| Simple OAuth (simple_oauth) | ✔ | ✖ | |
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An implementation of OAuth 2.0 Authorization Framework RFC - based on a PHP League package. |
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| User restrictions (user_restrictions) | ✔ | ✔ | |
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"Essential" Block registrations (wildcards on email address and username) Useful if you're getting persistent spam registrations from certain domains. Tested with D7. This used to be in core in D6. |
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| AddToAny Share Buttons (addtoany) | ✔ | ✖ | |
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Nice, clean, SVG sharing buttons. Project page says it's specifically optimised for Drupal. |
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| Image Lazyloader (lazyloader) | ✔ | ✖ | |
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Images are hidden until they scroll into view. Can specify distance before loading is triggered, also placeholder image, loading GIF and any pages to be excluded. There's been some Drupal 8 development but unclear how complete it is. |
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| Memcache API and Integration (memcache) | ✔ | ✔ | |
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"Essential" Enable memcache_admin submodule to access stats page. Requires the PECL PHP memcached module. I've written a blog post explaining how to install this on Acquia Dev Desktop. |
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| Role Watchdog (role_watchdog) | ✔ | ✔ | |
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"Essential" Logs every time a role is changed. Users get a Role History tab and there's a notification feature. Should now work fine on D8, not personally tested it (earlier: 15 Sep 2018 - there's a dev branch, but when you install it complains about missing role entity, and drush updb does nothing) |
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| Serial Field (serial) | ✔ | ✔ | |
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"Essential" Creates a field with a serial number, so you can have the equivalent of a MySQL AUTO_INCREMENT field for a content type (if nodes are deleted the old serial number is not reused). Although this only has a dev branch which hasn't had updates since April 2016, it does work in D8. There's no direct migration path previous versions, but people have written their own migrations. Check issue queue for patches - including:
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| Spambot (spambot) | ✔ | ✔ | |
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"Essential" Scans email addresses/usernames/IP addresses against the stopforumspam.com database and then blocks or deletes the accounts. Tested with D7. |
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| Pathauto (pathauto) | ✔ | ✔ | |
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"Essential" Generates URL aliases for new content automatically - using token-based patterns per content type - e.g. /reports/[node:title] When you install this, the settings are in /admin/config/search/path – normally this page has no tabs, with this module you get Patterns, Settings, Bulk Generate, Delete Aliases). |
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| Contact Storage (contact_storage) | ✔ | ✔ | |
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"Essential" Store all contact form messages in the database (as an entity), rather than just emailing them. Integrates with views, if you want a view of messages. Messages are accessible (can be edited or deleted) at /admin/structure/contact/messages. (May be useful considering From: address SPF/DMARC problem with contact forms, i.e. there may be cases where some emails aren't delivered.) |
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| Flag (flag) | ✔ | ✔ | |
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"Essential" Handle favourites, reading lists, spam, friend lists etc. Can be applied to any entity (nodes, users, comments etc.) It appears as a clickable link. Can choose between page reload and AJAX when user toggles it. Linked with views, and you can trigger events when flag count reaches a threshold. |
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| String Overrides (stringoverrides) | ✔ | ✔ | |
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"Essential" Replace text on the site. |
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| Allowed Formats (allowed_formats) | ✔ | ✔ | |
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"Essential" Control which text formats are available per field. (Often you'll want some fields to be simpler than others - e.g. you might want restrict everyone to a single format so they don't see a dropdown menu. You can hide the 'About text formats' link and the list of available HTML tags, again per field, in the Form Display tab using the widget icon. |
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| Double Field (double_field) | ✔ | ✔ | |
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"Essential" Store a pair of fields together (numbers and text, boolean, email, telephone, Url). As normal you can specify the quantity of double fields per entity, or allow an unlimited number. Note: D7 version doesn't support 'date'. Don't use it for:
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| Upgrade Status (for Drupal 9) (upgrade_status) | ✔ | ✔ | |
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"Essential" Very useful module for scanning installed modules (including your own custom code) for compatibility issues - gives a detailed report of necessary fixes. NB: scanning using the UI (rather than Drush) won't work on a dev server without a valid SSL certificate. |
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| Entityqueue (entityqueue) | ✔ | ✔ | |
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Build a custom list of nodes. The setup is via Admin > Structure. Currently D8 alpha. |
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| Paragraphs (paragraphs) | ✔ | ✔ | |
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For those familiar with WordPress, this is the equivalent of the ACF repeater field. You can create paragraph types, which are collections of one or more fields, and the user can add as many of them as they like. So you could have distinct paragraph styles, e.g. with images aligned in a certain way, or a page consisting of parallax backgrounds etc. |
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| Structure Sync (structure_sync) | ✔ | ✔ | |
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"Essential" Lets you synchronise taxonomies, custom blocks and menus. Important: always double check after importing if menu / block etc. has been correctly updated - if not, you may need to use a more forceful option. |
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| Permissions Filter (permissions_filter) | ✔ | ✔ | |
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"Essential" The admin permissions page can get pretty long. This lets you narrow it down by typing permission names into a text field. |
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| Address (address) | ✔ | ✔ | |
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Used to be called addressfield. Adds one dependency - commerceguys/addressing. This is a bundle of address fields, the correct combinations are shown depending on which country the user selects via a dropdown. It validates postcodes are in the correct format. Also supports 'zones' (groups of countries/subdivisions) for shipping/tax purposes. |
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| Views taxonomy term name into ID (views_taxonomy_term_name_into_id) | ✔ | ✔ | |
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Allows you to use /my-view/foo instead of /my-view/123 when adding a contextual filter based on taxonomy terms |
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| Username policy (username_policy) | ✔ | ✔ | |
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This gives you a single box where you can enter tokens to form the default username. It seems to work, but in D7 the patterns section ("Only use the below pattern elements") was empty. This is supposedly because there's a dependency on the 'profile' module, except profile doesn't exist in D7 (I tried profile2 instead but it made no difference) and profile2 doesn't exist in D8. auto_username displays tokens OK and is more powerful / has more settings including customise at what point names are truncated, etc. |
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