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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Recommendations (for and against) are my personal opinion only and may be out of date.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 | Personally Tested Sort descending | Last Updated |
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Automatic Nodetitles (auto_nodetitle) | ✖ | ✖ | |
You can hide a node's title field (for reference, every node has to have a title) and generate it automatically, similar to pathauto. No-one's porting this to D8 yet. |
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Datetime Range (datetime_range) | ✔ | ✖ | |
"Essential" Now in core, but you need to enable it. Adds an 'all-day' option. |
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Twig Tweak (twig_tweak) | ✔ | ✖ | |
Adds Twig syntax to insert views, view results, regions, entities (e.g. nodes, blocks, webforms), menus, images, image styles, tokens, breadcrumbs, messages, contextual links and more. |
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Mollom (mollom) | ✔ | ✖ | |
Deprecated Not recommended DO NOT USE - security issue and Acquia will no longer support or maintain it. Spam filtering SaaS from Acquia. Free for up to 50 "ham" messages a day. Scans message then provides a captcha if appropriate, scores each message for reputation, spam etc. I never tried this module and anecdotally I've seen mixed reports / people suggesting it's not all that good. |
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Coder (coder) | ✔ | ✖ | |
Checks your code against Drupal coding standards. No need to install this - isn't actually a module, it's a set of phpcs rules installed as standard in /vendor/drupal/coder/coder_sniffer |
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Block Visibility Groups (block_visibility_groups) | ✔ | ✖ | |
Rather than change visibility for individual blocks, you can group them together and assign complex visibility settings to all of them. Module page promotes it as a simpler alternative to Panels. |
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Flood Control (flood_control) | ✖ | ✖ | |
Protect against brute-force login attacks. Unclear what's happening with porting of this. |
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Feeds (feeds) | ✔ | ✖ | |
"Essential" As of Sep 2018, up to alpha3 in D8 (but not personally tested). Lets you import CSV/RSS etc. files and various other formats and map them to nodes/user/taxonomy terms, either one-off or periodically. |
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Alexa (alexa) | ✔ | ✖ | |
Integrates with Amazon Echo. Allows Drupal to respond to Alexa skills requests. See Dries' blog with video demo. |
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Field collection (field_collection) | ✔ | ✖ | |
Allows you to group a set of fields together. In active development for D8 but still a lot of open bugs at time of writing - project page says it will likely be replaced by Paragraphs. |
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Refreshless (refreshless) | ✔ | ✖ | |
Only loads the parts of page that change when navigating between pages. Unclear if still being maintained (no updates since Sep 2016) - part of the issue is it requires a core patch. |
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Trash (trash) | ✔ | ✖ | |
Adds a trash bin for all content, so you may later restore (or permanently delete) it. Depends on Content Moderation module. Alpha in D8. |
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CKEditor Custom Config (ckeditor_config) | ✔ | ✖ | |
I've not actually used this but I adapted it's code to enforce a configuration setting (I wanted to remove the HTML dom elements that are shown in the status bar). The module allows you to supply your configuration using the UI. |
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Node Export (node_export) | ✖ | ✖ | |
Tto actually export node content. An 8.x version has begun development:
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Twig Extensions (twig_extensions) | ✔ | ✖ | |
Text filters, array and date manipulation. (haven't tried this yet) |
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Restrict Login or Role Access by IP Address (restrict_by_ip) | ✖ | ✖ | |
Can specify single IP address or ranges. Two modes: restrict login, so they can only login from certain IPs, and restrict role, so they can login from anywhere but only access a role's permissions from the defined IPs. There's a D8 dev branch, last updated June 2016. |
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Entity Access Audit (entity_access_audit) | ✔ | ✖ | |
This is a way of visualising - via grids of ticks and crosses - which roles have access to different operations on different entities. |
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Group (group) | ✔ | ✖ | |
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) | ✔ | ✖ | |
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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Simple OAuth (simple_oauth) | ✔ | ✖ | |
An implementation of OAuth 2.0 Authorization Framework RFC - based on a PHP League package. |
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AddToAny Share Buttons (addtoany) | ✔ | ✖ | |
Nice, clean, SVG sharing buttons. Project page says it's specifically optimised for Drupal. |
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Autofocus (focus) | ✖ | ✖ | |
Autofocuses the first field of form (forms can be specified). No sign of a D8 port. |
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Image Lazyloader (lazyloader) | ✔ | ✖ | |
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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Autosave (autosave) | ✖ | ✖ | |
Saves snapshot of content type form using AJAX. Content types and save frequency can be configured. No sign of a D8 port yet. |
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Masquerade (masquerade) | ✔ | ✔ | |
"Essential" Allows you to browse the site as another user (to see what they see) and then quickly switch back again. A general Drupal recommendation is to create test accounts for each of your roles, so this is useful for testing them. (As per notes, don't use it for anonymous access, just log out.) Replacement for 'Switch User'. Patch and known bug:
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Metatag (metatag) | ✔ | ✔ | |
"Essential" This comes with a whole series of modules, including metatag_verification that will allow you to insert a google-site-verification tab. Instructions How to add it to a content type/bundle:
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Field group (field_group) | ✔ | ✔ | |
"Essential" Add group' button to /admin/config/people/accounts/form-display (or any other form), can then group fields inside fieldset/other HTML wrappers.
Types of groups:
In theory can use this to add <div>s with css styles such as flexbox, like webform uses, but CSS to support that needs to be present on the page. |
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Raven (raven) | ✔ | ✔ | |
"Essential" This module logs events and sends them to Sentry. Sentry is an open source application you can self-install, but also a free/paid SaaS version. For a content management framework as complex as Drupal it's worth logging errors. Tips:
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Views infinite scroll (views_infinite_scroll) | ✔ | ✔ | |
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Unique field ajax (unique_field_ajax) | ✔ | ✔ | |
"Essential" Gives you a checkbox for 'Unique' when editing fields - can have it checked during form entry (via AJAX) and specify a custom error message per field. Seems to have bug where field you're checking is sometimes refocused (even if no errors) if you've already tabbed away from it and continued typing. |
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View Migration (view_migration) | ✖ | ✔ | |
Not recommended Migrate views from D7 to D8. My experience of the YAML output has been: - incomplete (e.g. multiple missing displays in a complex view, views without a machine name) It doesn't look like there's much current development activity (likewise migrate_views, which is the other plugin people usually mention). |
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Comment Notify (comment_notify) | ✔ | ✔ | |
"Essential" Allows users to receive emails for replies to their comments (or optionally for all comments on a node). Can be toggled by content type (although not by comment type, if you have more than one comment entity). In permissions, you can also control which roles can subscribe. Can also set it so the author of a node also automatically gets emailed for every comment. I'm using three patches:
I also have a site which uses two comment types; I wrote a patch to turn off the notification checkbox for one of them. |
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Devel (devel) | ✔ | ✔ | |
"Essential" Key features:
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Add another (addanother) | ✔ | ✔ | |
"Essential" For this to work for any content type after you activate it, you have to manually edit and save that content type's settings, otherwise the buttons will be missing. |
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Responsive and off-canvas menu (responsive_menu) | ✔ | ✔ | |
This uses a JS library and works without a second copy of the menu in the HTML, and you don't need to make any changes to your existing navigation menu. Look at the README file for instructions. Note you're forced with the mobile version of the menu to have it expand to full depth (although the hack/workaround, if you want a top-level menu only, is to hide the lower elements in CSS) For hand-crated CSS / minimal javascript solutions, see https://css-tricks.com/responsive-menu-concepts/ |
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SEO Checklist (seo_checklist) | ✔ | ✔ | |
Shows a long checklist, split over a series of tabs, you can tick off items and some (e.g. modules you need to install) are auto-detected. See Module of the Week blog post. |
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Configuration Update Manager (config_update) | ✔ | ✔ | |
You also need to enable config_update_ui, which adds an 'Updates report' tab to Config Sync (/admin/config/development/configuration/report) |
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Better Exposed Filters (better_exposed_filters) | ✔ | ✔ | |
"Essential" My recommendation - safe to use but understand it's currently pretty limited due to bugs. To activate, change a view's Exposed Form style (Advanced column) to 'Better exposed filters'.
Limitations:
So all you can really do with BEF at the moment is use the AJAX setting. |
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Real Name (realname) | ✔ | ✔ | |
Use tokens to merge first name, last name or any other fields. Note: you have to add code to substitute the default username in the title of user node views - e.g. in |
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Computed Field (computed_field) | ✔ | ✔ | |
Add a field whose value is calculated using raw PHP; specifically $value = 'foo'; (The recommendation is you write your PHP in a module of your own, and then call that method from the UI - for security and version control reasons). Note: value is only calculated when nodes are saved (i.e. will initially be empty for existing content). D8 status; alpha but working. |
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Toolbar menu (toolbar_menu) | ✔ | ✔ | |
"Essential" Add extra menus (which appear as cog icons with a title, which you can click and expand) to the admin toolbar at the top of your site. |
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Views Contextual Filters OR (views_contextual_filters_or) | ✔ | ✔ | |
"Essential" By default if you add multiple contextual filters to a view, they must all pass (AND). |
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Coffee (coffee) | ✔ | ✔ | |
"Essential" Keyboard shortcuts. A bit like Spotlight/Alfred/Launchbar. Alt+D to launch (memonic: alt + D = coffee!) Handy as it doesn't clash with browser keyboard-shortcut extensions such as Vimium. Tips:
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Configuration Override Warn (config_override_warn) | ✔ | ✔ | |
"Essential" Displays a message on config pages indicating which config settings have been override by settings. |
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D8 Editor Advanced link (editor_advanced_link) | ✔ | ✔ | |
Adds options should as choice of target, title, class ID etc. to the link dialog in CKEditor. Needs configuring after install. |
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Snippet Manager (snippet_manager) | ✔ | ✔ | |
Snippets are Twig templates that can be managed using the UI. They can be inserted in various ways including via CKEditor, tokens. Support for HTML, CSS, JS, and variables. |
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Environment Indicator (environment_indicator) | ✔ | ✔ | |
"Essential" Change the colour of the admin menu according to whether you're using dev, staging, production etc. (You can also add 'switcher' menu links, e.g. Open in dev, Open in Prod). Notes: - need to reset the cache after you've made changes [#2406619] |
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Content access (content_access) | ✔ | ✔ | |
"Essential" Set permissions by content type (with the option of overriding node by node) |
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Rules (rules) | ✔ | ✔ | |
Patch needed (the pages and roles tabs are missing on block editing form otherwise): |
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HMS Field (hms_field) | ✔ | ✔ | |
Hours/minutes/seconds field type (formats: h:mm, h:mm:ss, m:ss, h, m or s). Drupal 8 in beta. |