Drupal is currently my favorite social web technology for the following reasons:
It has a few downsides as well:
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Here comes the list of my favorite modules which I can recommend since I'm using them a lot:
Module | What it solves | Comments |
---|---|---|
Nodeaccess: Acces rights for nodes | Allows to provide access rights for roles at node level. Every creator of node can assign access rights to the individual node. This is what it takes to give a a community the ability to control access to their own content in the Internet. |
+ works for all node based content + menus will disappear in parallel when no access is given + it nicely leverages roles as the unit to provide access - It doesn't seem to allow to protect forums but only forum topics - It doesn't protect non node based content like some photo albums |
Pathauto: manages clean URLs | I don't want to exhibit the underlying technology of my web site. Pathauto allows to automatically derive URLs from a page title while it is still possible to pick |
The entire technology is based on Apache URL rewriting filters. The .htaccess or httpd.conf will need the right directives to make everything work. Requires module Token |
dthml Menu | The regular menus in Drupal will force repaints of the entire page whenever a menu is getting expanded. The dhtml Menu module solves this problem | No configuration needed. The module just needs to be enabled |
FCK WYSIWYG html editor | I don't want to be limited to simplified html editing or pure full html editing. FCK is solving the prblem |
+ Works well with Safari and Firefox (PEGOEditor doesn't support Safari) - The popup mode seems to always expand to full screen size. This is an overkill on my 24" screen Requires separate download of editor itself |
Backup and Migrate | Allows to pull a MySQL database backup through the browser itself | + Useful in "poor" hosting environments where the access to MySQL is cumbersome. This means environments where you can't copy the MySQL files |
Views | A smart query builder which allows to mine the database. Interesting templates for starters like a glossary, newest content etc. | |
Visitor Info | Allows to display the location of your readers |
+ nice eye catcher -- this module became a head ache lately. Its part of the cron job and it's run time exceeds the run time limits in my shared hosting environment (30s). It became bearable only due to the additional installation of the supercron module. |
SuperCron | Very useful module for everyone which cron job issues. It provides details about the individual task being run in a cron job. |
+ a must to analyze problems with individual tasks + It allows to kick off cron jobs by specific IP addresses only + Allows to reorder tasks in the cron job |
Other Resources
- Drupalcenter.de: A great side with excellent German forums, localized German Drupal download and pointer to all German Drupal user groups
- Friends and buddies
- Thomas Narres: The ultimate Drupal guru
- Constantin Gonzales: Cheat sheets at AMP and OS level for Drupal
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