Essential Drupal Modules

A List of excellent Modules I commonly use.

I suppose not really essential, but at least they are modules that I use regularly and find it hard not to install as they are so good.

Administration Menu

Provides a dropdown menu to most administrative tasks and other common destinations (to users with the proper permissions).

Great for getting at all the admin pages quickly

http://drupal.org/project/admin_menu

CCK (Content Construction Kit)

Enables the creation of custom content types without programming.

Great for creating content types and with the extra fields listed below you can get images events and calenders quickly set up.

http://drupal.org/project/cck

Filefield

Depends on: PHP 5, CCK

Defines a file field type. - For CCK

http://drupal.org/project/filefield

ImageField

Drupal 6 Depends on: FileField. Drupal 5 Depends on: requires ImageAPI.

Defines an image field type. - For CCK

http://drupal.org/project/imagefield

Link

Depends on: CCK

Defines a URL field type. - For CCK

http://drupal.org/project/link

CAPTCHA

provides a challenge-response test to determine whether the user is human.

Spam avoidance and when used with recaptcha, I feel that I'm at least giving something back

http://drupal.org/project/captcha

Google Analytics

Adds Google Analytics javascript tracking code to all your site's pages.

Could go into the SEO section, but I think using analytics gives you insight into what content is being used, handy for prioritising where to focus your energy in your site

http://drupal.org/project/google_analytics

Image

Allows uploading, resizing and viewing of images.

Nuff said, unless you like text only sites, or doing things the hard way

http://drupal.org/project/image

Image Assist

Depends on: Image

Enables users to upload and insert inline images into posts.

As above

http://drupal.org/project/img_assist

ImageAPI

Depends on: PHP5

Provides ImageAPI supporting multiple toolkits.

Makes the above 2 a little easier

http://drupal.org/project/imageapi

ImageCache

Depends on: Transliteration

Allows you to dynamically manipulate and cache images.

Great if you are allowing others to upload content and don't want massive images everywhere.

http://drupal.org/project/imagecache

IMCE

an image/file uploader.

Good for content editors, but overkill if you have the above installed as well.

http://drupal.org/project/imce

IMCE Wysiwyg bridge

Depends on: IMCE, Wysiwyg

acts as a bridge between the IMCE module and the Wysiwyg module.

http://drupal.org/project/imce_wysiwyg

Mime Detect

an API for consistent server side mime detection

http://drupal.org/project/mimedetect

Pathauto

Provides a mechanism for modules to automatically generate aliases for the content they manage.

Good for keeping URL's standard throughout your site.

http://drupal.org/project/pathauto

reCAPTCHA

Depends on: CAPTCHA

Uses the reCAPTCHA web service to improve the CAPTCHA

While stopping spam, you also help digitise books, not bad going for 10 seconds of your users time, see recaptcha.net/learnmore.html for more information.

http://drupal.org/project/recaptcha

Token

Provides a shared API for replacement of textual placeholders with actual data.

http://drupal.org/project/token

Trackback

Sending and retrieval of TrackBacks

http://drupal.org/project/trackback

Transliteration

central transliteration facility for other Drupal modules, as well as sanitizing of file names during uploads.

Keep it clean

http://drupal.org/project/transliteration

Views

Create customized lists and queries from your database.

Standard for creating lists of content, see the standard blog layout for example.

http://drupal.org/project/views

Webform

Enables creation of questionnaires, contact or request/register forms, surveys, and polls.

Contact form made easy

http://drupal.org/project/webform

Wysiwyg

Allows users to edit contents with client-side editors.

Essential if you don't want your content creators to learn html.

http://drupal.org/project/wysiwyg

Stuff not usually necessary for the standard user

If you develop or maintain your own modules or themes then, I would consider these essential.

Coder

assists with code review and version upgrade

Great way to keep your modules and themes adhering to the drupal coding standards.

http://drupal.org/project/coder

Devel

Helper functions for Drupal developers

Ideal for troubleshooting layouts and module outputs.

http://drupal.org/project/devel

Stuff I usually install for SEO purposes

A Links

Allows users to associates defined text to links.

Automatically create internal links, priceless!

http://drupal.org/project/alinks

Global Redirect

creates a 301 redirect to ensure duplicate content is not provided.

Doubly useful in site migrations

http://drupal.org/project/globalredirect

Menu Attributes

Depends on: Drupal 6

allows you to specify some additional attributes for menu items

IDs, No follows and classes... oh my.

http://drupal.org/project/menu_attributes

Nodewords

allows you to set meta tags for each node, view or panels page.

Should be self explainatory

http://drupal.org/project/nodewords

Open Calais

automatically creates rich semantic metadata for the content

No more explaination required.

http://drupal.org/project/opencalais

Page Title

gives you granular control over how the title should be structured

Automatically set up title rules in a similar way you can set up pathauto.

http://drupal.org/project/page_title

Path Redirect

allows you to specify a redirect from one path to another path.

Ideal for site migrition.

http://drupal.org/project/path_redirect

Search 404

performs a search on the keywords in the URL

Just in case you miss anything in your redirects.

http://drupal.org/project/search404

Tweet

Builds links to post pages to twitter.

Allow users to tell people about your content.

http://drupal.org/project/tweet

Twitter

Adds integration with the Twitter microblogging service.

Tell the world (ok twitter, but it will quickly get to google) that you have created new content.

http://drupal.org/project/twitter

XML Sitemap

Creates an XML site map in accordance with the sitemaps.org specification.

All your content on plate in a way that google likes it.

http://drupal.org/project/xmlsitemap

Really useful Modules if there is a need for them

What follows is a list of modules that I have used before and if I get a chance I'm going to implement, when I have a need for it.

Actions

Drupal 5 only - Part of core in drupal 6

Enables actions to be fired on certain system events, such as when new content is created.

http://drupal.org/project/actions

Advanced Help

Provides context sensitive online help for modules, including Views.

http://drupal.org/project/advanced_help

Apache Solr Search

Certain Features depend on: Search, Image, Organic groups

integrates Drupal with the Apache Solr search platform.

http://drupal.org/project/apachesolr

Calendar

Depends on: PHP 5.2, Views, Date API

Displays any Views or CCK date fields in calendar formats.

http://drupal.org/project/calendar

Chaos tool suite

Depends on: Drupal 6

a set of APIs and tools to improve the developer experience.

http://drupal.org/project/ctools

Comment Notify

Sends notification e-mails to visitors about new comments on pages where they have commented.

http://drupal.org/project/comment_notify

Date

Depends on: CCK

Define date/time field type. - For CCK

http://drupal.org/project/date

Fivestar

Depends on: Voting API, Views

A simple five-star voting widget for nodes.

http://drupal.org/project/fivestar

HTML Purifier

a standards-compliant HTML filter library.

http://drupal.org/project/htmlpurifier

jQuery Lightbox

Requires jQuery Update

Used to overlay images on the current page.

http://drupal.org/project/jlightbox

jQuery Update

facilitates an upgrade of jQuery

http://drupal.org/project/jquery_update

Mollom

Protects against comment and contact form spam.

http://drupal.org/project/mollom

Panels

Depends on: CTOOLS

allows a site administrator to create customized layouts for multiple uses.

http://drupal.org/project/panels

Poor Mans Cron

uns the Drupal cron operations without needing the cron application.

http://drupal.org/project/poormanscron

Printer, e-mail and PDF versions

Depends on: a 3rd Party pdf generator (c.f. the drupal module page for instructions)

Generates printer-friendly and PDF versions of pages, and "send to a friend" email functionality.

http://drupal.org/project/print

Tagadelic

Makes weighted tag clouds from your taxonomy terms.

http://drupal.org/project/tagadelic

Thickbox

show a single image, multiple images, inline content, iframed content, or content served through AJAX in a hybrid modal.

http://drupal.org/project/thickbox

Voting API

Provides a shared voting API for other modules.

http://drupal.org/project/votingapi