16 Drupal Modules That Should Be On Every Site
When people think about open-source CMS, they initially imagine WordPress. But it’s not the only option. There are already a few more alternatives to it. And one of the best on the list is Drupal.
It’s a free content management system that offers even greater scalability and provides easier customization. In WordPress, you need to ensure plugin compatibility every time you add a new tool. On the other hand, Drupal uses modules that combine with ease, like Lego details.
Today we want to show you the best 16 modules for Drupal that should be on any website. They work great both on small and big sites, blogs and e-commerce platforms. Those 16 tools ease your management process, so you can spend your time on more pleasant things.
What is Drupal?
Drupal is a free open-source content management system that would be perfect for building websites and applications. The PHP-based CMS uses advanced database management systems (MySQL or PostgreSQL).
Drupal operates on a module-based infrastructure, which allows you to customize a website to your needs. Most modules perfectly fit with others, without any glitches. It is a pretty rare situation in other CMS, even WordPress plugins don’t have that compatibility level.
Why Drupal is a great WordPress alternative?
Both CMS are open-sourced, so they are free, and you can fully customize them. Both have fine user management, where admins can create accounts and modify their access level. Both have great communities, where people share useful plugins that they created.
As for today, WordPress has a bigger plugin library. It’s simply because it’s a more widely known platform. However, Drupal also has thousands of modules for every purpose. At the same time, Drupal has more distinct technical advantages than its rival:
- Increased scalability. Drupal websites are easy to scale. It’s the best solution for small businesses, who want to expand in the future. WordPress is fine for small websites, or blogs where different pages don’t rely on each other. Drupal would be perfect for sites and applications that need service with ease of scale without losing coherency.
- Enhanced security. The Drupal team launches security updates every month to keep users safe. At the same time, WordPress releases patches once in 2-4 months.
- Content Taxonomy. Improved default categorization allows admins to classify and sort any content with ease. In WordPress, you should add numerous plugins to achieve similar results.
Also, Drupal supports custom application development. Thus, developers can build their own level-2 solutions. Multi-site management allows admins to control multiple sites and apps simultaneously. In WordPress, you need to switch from one site to another, which may be kind of annoying.
If this is not enough for you, you can install many third-party tools due to the support of Composer for dependencies management. Also, Drupal uses the object-oriented programming paradigm, which increases code flexibility, and security and provides more abilities to reuse it in other projects. All OOP projects are easy to read and understand, which saves time on troubleshooting and adding new features.
The Best 16 Modules for Drupal
Drupal doesn’t have plugins in a classic sense. This CMS uses modules, which you as admin can add on each other, like a constructor. It gives you the freedom to create unique services.
Views
It’s one of the most common modules for Drupal. It allows you to create custom queries, displays, content lists, etc. You can visualize almost any information in the admin panel, which makes the management process even easier.
You can create your own filters and sorting algorithms, displaying a relationship between seemingly unrelated data. Customized layouts allow you to change the appearance of the view with ease. It works great with other Drupal modules.
Visual Editor and CKEditor
Those modules allow you to create and edit content using an intuitive visual interface similar to Microsoft Word or Google Docs. You can embed videos, photos, GIFs, product cards, etc.
They support rich text editing, allowing formatting without needing to write HTML code. At the same time, more advanced users can edit HTML code manually. They work perfectly with each other, providing great formatting for various content types.
Visual Editor also supports interface frameworks Bootstrap 3.x and Bootstrap 4.x. CKEditor has built-in AI-driven proofreaders for 15+ languages including various dialects of English, German, Dutch, Portuguese (both Portugal and Brazilian), Ukrainian and Indonesian.
Scroll Triggered Box for Drupal
Great module for those who are selling right on their website. It adds a pop-up window with customizable content and placement. You can also set a trigger that launches the pop-up: scroll percentage, reaching some point of the page or comment section, as a response to hit a like or share button, etc. It draws user attention and can amplify the main CTA of the page.
Security Kit
It’s the safeguard Drupal module that can help you protect the website from attacks and vulnerabilities. It offers protection from cross-site scripting, request forgery, clickjacking, etc. The Content Security Policy integration helps you to mitigate the risks of possible unauthorized code injections. You can specify trusted sources of scripts, stylesheets, etc.
Enabled HTTP security headers add an extra layer of protection against online attacks. Granular configurations allow you to customize security settings to the finest detail.
Pathauto
This tool automatically generates SEO and user-friendly URLs, saving you hours of work time. It generates URLs based on specific tokens and patterns, making them easily understandable both to humans and search machines.
You can create your own custom naming pattern for different content types, including the ability of dynamic URL changes. You can modify URLs in bulk and manage URL aliases. Regenerate web addresses in one click, making existing content match new naming patterns.
Webform
This module allows you to build forms on your website, making sending requests or contact data a seamless process. You can create customized forms by adding different elements such as text boxes, dropdown menus, checkboxes, etc. It will be easy to arrange items there because it offers a simple drag-and-drop interface.
More advanced admins can add some sophisticated form features like conditional logic, file uploads, validation rules, captcha, etc. Webform collects and stores all submissions on your site. You can access it right from the admin panel or export it in various formats, such as CSV or Excel.
Drush
It’s a command-line tool for advanced admins, which eases the management for them. This module provides a collection of time-saving commands for common tasks, allowing you to perform operations on multiple sites simultaneously.
The Drush gives you the ability to define and manage Drupal site buildings using a makefile (document/blueprint to automate the managing process).
This tool seamlessly integrates with various version control systems like Git. You can also create aliases for local, development, and production environments. Drush allows you to create custom commands to manage your workflow.
Devel
It’s a suite of development tools that helps you in profiling, debugging, and troubleshooting the website. It provides valuable debugging data that will provide a deeper understanding of the site. The query logging feature helps developers identify broken or poorly optimized queries.
Execution profiling measures the execution time of PHP code and provides an in-depth analysis of it. It allows you to easily find performance bottlenecks and optimize your code for the best efficiency.
Theme developer tools will benefit developers who are making Drupal templates. Content generation tools generate test content for your site, which will be useful in the development stage.
But beware that this module is designed for development environments. Don’t launch it on the live production site because it may expose sensitive information and pose security risks.
Coder
This module provides code review, assisting developers and showing them how to maintain coding standards and ensure code quality in Drupal projects. The Coder performs regular auto-checks on your code, highlighting deviations from the standards and providing suggestions on how to improve it.
Coder fully integrates with popular standards like Drupal Coding Standards (DCS) and PHP CodeSniffer. It also integrates with Continuous Integration (CI) workflows and tools. Moreover, Coder provides command-line tools and IDE (Integrated Development Environment) to optimize the code review process.
Backup and Migrate
If a business doesn’t do backups, it’s because they don’t do it YET. You will need a fine backup tool. And this module is a great tool to automate this process. Take snapshots of the content and other crucial data. Schedule backups on preferred intervals: day, week, month, quarter, etc.
Set any preferable storage option: physical computer, remote server, or cloud solution. Restore or migrate the site in one click. You can back up each aspect of the site or pick a strict list of elements. Moreover, you can even migrate your site between environments: from development to production and vice versa.
Masquerade
A helpful tool for developers and content managers allowing them to see how a page or whole website will look from the perspective of the user with different access levels. So, basically, it plays in a masquerade under the mask of different users.
This module allows user testing and troubleshooting by simulating different situations. You can quickly switch between users without the need to re-login, which saves you hours of time.
Captcha
It’s a useful module that protects your website from spam and automated bot attacks. It can protect your site forms (comment, registration, contact, etc.) from spam submission with a challenge that requires human intervention.
You can choose between different challenge types: simple checkmark, image-based, text-based, or even a mathematical problem. Pick a difficulty level and provide accessibility features.
Google Analytics
It’s a module from Google that should be on any website. It helps you track and analyze various metrics related to traffic sources, visitor behavior, conversions, etc. Collect different user metrics and analyze them in real time, comparing the progress.
Customize dashboards and reports, so they fully suit your needs. Track specific user events, such as downloads, video plays, button clicks, etc. E-commerce can track specific metrics like sales, revenue, average order value, etc.
Responsive Images
This module adapts images to different screen sizes of devices to ensure your content looks great both on a small iPhone 8 and a 4K 27” computer screen. It automatically detects devices’ capabilities and delivers an appropriately sized image. This tool reduces the amount of data to download, which results in faster load times.
It uses HTML’s “srcset” and “sizes” attributes to provide multiple image sources with different sizes and resolutions. Once the tool detects display size and resolution, it loads a picture that suits those parameters.
Drupal Commerce
This is a great framework for e-commerce companies, who want to build their site/app on Drupal. It provides a customizable platform for businesses that want to sell their products or services online.
You can build and manage online stores, handle large product catalogs, order management, and process payments in a single tool. You can customize design and layout, make unique product displays and create user-friendly checkout processes. Manage orders right on your website: track order statuses, manage customer accounts, handle refunds/returns, and generate and analyze reports.
Wrapping Up
Drupal is a great, more scalable WordPress alternative. It works on an open-source basis, so it’s totally free, which benefits small businesses looking for an admin-friendly and secure CMS. Most Drupal modules also work on an open-source basis, so you don’t need to pay for them.
But it’s quite complex to develop with it, so you may spend days trying to understand Drupal standards and how to implement needed tools. That’s why we recommend you find a team who does it for you.
Experts will build your website, taking into account your future growth. They create your site in such a way that you can scale it at any time any size. It saves you time and money, so you don’t need to spend that much when you decide to scale up your site.
We, in Synergy Way, already built dozens of Drupal sites both for small and big businesses. And we are ready to do it for you! Contact us to get your software outsourcing team which helps you to achieve your goals as soon as possible!
