Drupal Modules for Site Builders
Feargal O'Kane
Developer @ BT48
feargal@BT48.com
Drupal Modules
Contributed modules allow you to tap into the work of other projects and use them for your own project.
Drupal's greatest strength and what first attracted me to the platform
Choosing the "right" module
- No single 'right' way to do something
- Lots of wrong ways
- Experience and trial and error
- Some of our 'base' modules
The right way:
For that project
at that budget
in that timescale
BT48 Approach
Flexibility
Adaptability
Ease of Use
Views
The bedrock of all our sites.
SITE STRUCTURE
Couldn't build a site without it
https://www.drupal.org/project/views
Context
We choose this approach for the vast majority of our projects:
- consistent
- ties in with our IA approach
- we know what we can and can't do easily with it
- YMMV
Panels
We have used Panels in the past and have used it on some recent projects:
- very flexible
- potentially powerful
- when the use case requires it then we are happy to use it
SITE STRUCTURE
VS
Context
https://www.drupal.org/project/context
Build your site in 'sections'
Sections controlled by conditions
Display blocks, hide regions, set menu & breadcrumbs, theme HTML...
Panels
https://www.drupal.org/project/panels
Build your site in 'sections'
Sections controlled by conditions
Display blocks, hide regions, set menu & breadcrumbs, theme HTML...
Editor can have control over layouts
site building
Display Suite
https://www.drupal.org/project/ds
Control how your content is displayed using a drag and drop interface.
Arrange your layouts without having to work your way through dozens of template files.
Consistent layout for content across the site
Custom view modes allow control over different layouts such as teaser lists, search results, the full node, views etc.
EVA
https://www.drupal.org/project/EVA
Provides a Views display plugin
Allows the output of a View to be attached to the content of any Drupal entity.
FIELDS
Field Group
https://www.drupal.org/project/field_group
Add fields into groups
Fieldgroup comes with default HTML wrappers like:
- vertical tabs,
- horizontal tabs,
- accordions,
- fieldsets or
- div wrappers.
Linked field
https://www.drupal.org/project/linked_field
Linked Field allows you to link fields in the field formatter settings.
For example - have a content type with an image and a link field and you want to link the image to the entered link.
No need for code - control through the GUI
MEDIA
oembed
https://www.drupal.org/project/oembed
Allow your Drupal site to embed content from oEmbed-providers
Add media by pasting link:
YouTube
Vimeo
Soundcloud
Amazon
flexslider
https://www.drupal.org/project/flexslider
Integrates the Flex Slider library with Drupal to build responsive, resizable slideshows.
The slideshows automatically adapt to the size of the browser window or device.
- Touch enabled navigation
- Keyboard navigation
- Configurable slide animation
fitvids
https://www.drupal.org/project/fitvids
If you have a responsive website and you want to embed video and other <iframe> content, then you need this module.
It uses the FitVids.js library for fluid width video embeds (e.g. flash video in <iframe>s).
You don't need it for pure HTML5 videos.
SEO
METAtag
https://www.drupal.org/project/metatag
Automatically provide structured metadata about a website.
More than the meta description tag and the meta keywords tag
Provides support for meta tags that allow control of how content appears when shared on social networks.
Open Graph Protocol from Facebook, Twitter Cards from Twitter
XML Sitemap
https://www.drupal.org/project/xmlsitemap
Creates a sitemap that conforms to the sitemaps.org specification.
Helps search engines to more intelligently crawl a website and keep their results up to date.
The sitemap created by the module can be automatically submitted to Google, Bing and Yahoo!
Can add sitemap links for content, menu items, taxonomy terms, and user profiles.
GEO
ADDRESSFIELD
Geocoder
geofield
Leaflet/Openlayers
SPAM
antibot
https://www.drupal.org/project/antibot
Designed to eliminate robotic form submissions on your website in an innovative-fashion.
The module works completely behind the scenes and doesn't require any interaction from the user.
The only requirement to the end user is that they must have Javascript enabled. If they do not, the protected forms will be hidden and a message will appear, telling the user that the form requires Javascript be enabled in order to use it.
honeypot
https://www.drupal.org/project/honeypot
Inserts a hidden form field to forms with a field name like 'homepage'.
End users don't see the field, so they don't fill it out. But spam bots (usually using prewritten scripts) do see the field (usually), and add something to it.
The Honeypot module detects this and blocks the form submission if there's something in the field.
smtp
https://www.drupal.org/project/smtp
This module allows Drupal to bypass the PHP mail() function and send email directly to an SMTP server. The module supports SMTP authentication and can even connect to servers using SSL if supported by PHP.
mailsystem
https://www.drupal.org/project/mailsystem
Provides an Administrative UI and Developers API for safely updating the mail_system configuration variable.
Allows certain mail to be sent as HTML, other as plain text
mimemail
https://www.drupal.org/project/mimemail
Allows users to receive HTML email and can be used by other modules.
Adopts your site's style by automatically including your theme's stylesheet files in a themable HTML message format
If prefers plaintext, the HTML will be converted to plain text and sent as-is.
Questions?
opinions?
Alternatives?
Feargal O'Kane
feargal@BT48.com
Open Days 2015
By Feargal O'Kane
Open Days 2015
- 1,777