Favorite Drupal Modules
Oftentimes, our most popular blog posts are centered on our favorite aspects of Drupal, WordPress, Social Media, or design. Keeping that in mind, we have decided to do a week of WDG Favorites! Today, we’re focusing on our development team’s favorite Drupal modules.
The most powerful aspects of Drupal are baked into modules. When you build a website on Drupal, modules provide the developer the ability to take the basic site and create a spectacular presence that is tailored to the user’s online needs. Without even the most basic module features, such as Taxonomy or Views, your basic Drupal site would hardly function. That being said, a number of modules are hidden or not very easily understood by people outside of the developer’s world. For today’s blog, our web developers picked out three unassuming modules that they find most useful when working on Drupal-based projects.
- Omega: This is a newer module, but we have already been deploying it on our web development projects. This is one that we didn’t realize we needed until we started using it and now we don’t know what we would do without it. Omega is a starter theme framework for Drupal that makes Drupal responsive and puts the tools for creating responsive layouts in the admin. It can be a powerful starting block when set up correctly which does take a little time. The long-term benefits, though, are priceless.
- Context: This module enhances the block interface and gives you the ability to define the context in which blocks (and views and menus etc) appear in a specific region.
- Delta: Delta builds on Context by allowing you to specify theme settings with context. The power here comes from the combination with Omega since it uses theme settings to define layout.
Obviously, we have many modules that we use regularly on our sites, but these are three unique modules that our developers rely heavily on for Drupal projects. As we discussed at length in previous blog posts, the great thing about Drupal is the platform’s ability to give the web developer and designer a license for creativity. Modules like Omega, Delta, and Context are prime examples of this. Someone building a small, basic site will probably not find any use for these modules, so it is understood that these types of modules aren’t standard on an basic installed Drupal site. On the other end of the spectrum, those developing large websites are likely to really want the features made available with these three modules. What are some of your favorite Drupal modules?
To find a list of modules that are currently available for your Drupal project, visit the modules page on the Drupal.org. Make sure to check back throughout the week for our daily blog posts to learn about other favorites of our team and how we make awesome websites!
