Drupal has a large collection of extendable modules which brings a new functionality, improves usability and helps you to work with Drupal in much better way. I have use Drupal for more than three years now and write a first Czech book about this system. Now I decided to select a few modules – really nice timesavers for Drupal.
Administration Menu
As a Drupal webmaster you have to navigate through the administration structure very often. You have to edit and post new articles, check new comments, check the logs, prepare new blocks etc. You can change the settings of the navigation menu and made all of its items expanded. But this is not very comfortable solution – it breaks down your website layout.
Using the Administration Menu module is much better. It will provide a horizontal panel with administration menu for all user with admin rights. This panel is added to the top of your website. Rollout items gives you immediate access to the all parts of the administration. Any click to Administration, Build, Modules and so aren’t needed.
Administration Menu is my Drupal timesaver number one.
Pathauto
You probably use Path module so you can modify the URL of each posted article. But you can let the Drupal to do this for you automatically. Using the Pathauto module (and Token module) you can prepare the pattern for node types, user profiles and other parts of your website.
Then Patauto will create the corresponding URLs for each of them. You can start using the Pathauto on already running websites. There is a function to recreate the aliases for nodes which doesn’t have them yet.
Scheduler
Imagine: you have a few articles for your website and would like to go for a vacation. Who will publish them? Would you like to interrupt your holiday finding internet café and post your articles? I think the answer is NO. So what is the solution?
Use the Scheduler module. It provides you a field where you can specify publish and unpublish date for each node you create. So you can prepare a bunch of articles and publish them in the future without going to the administration.
Mollom
Spam in comments is the most annoying part of website administration. There are many Drupal modules fighting against the spammers. I tried the well-known captcha and captcha pack. However I think the best antispam solution for Drupal is the Mollom.
The Mollom modules work with the antispam service of the same name. It is another project of Drupal’s creator, Dries Buytaert. For a common websites it is for free.
The best thing on Mollom is that this module/service doesn’t need a special settings like captcha. It works with the spammers database and you are able to report any new spammers you will find. Mollom provides you a graph with spam statistics too. So forget about manually deleting spammers.
Transliteration
Do you use the Upload module from the Drupal core? If you upload files with non-english characters you can experience problems on Linux webhostings. The solution is to rename these files. Transliteration module do this for you as soon as you upload a file.
Upload Path
Upload Path is a module which allows you to define a path where will be attachments to your nodes saved. Using the Token pattern you define a folder and Upload path move the files to it after you will save the node.
And why I think about Upload Path as a timesaver? I use the folder name’s pattern based on node’s post date. So I can find the files using FTP very easily if needed.
AdSense
More and more people asks me about a way how to implement AdSense code to the Drupal websites. Instead of copying the AdSense code to the template codes (node.tpl.php or page.tpl.php) and to the Drupal’s blocks use the AdSense module.
It offers very easy way to change your AdSense’ parameters and offers AdSense revenue sharing for you and your readers. This could be one way how to attract more visitors and users to your website.
XML Sitemap
Another very useful timesaver is XML Sitemap module. It will create a sitemap.xml for your website, allows you to change the nodes weights for this sitemaps and what’s moreover – it could automatically send the information about the new nodes to the search engines. Google, Windows Live, Yahoo! and Ask.com are currently supported.
Poormanscron
Maybe not a really timesaver but it can help if you will find that your webhoster doesn’t support user defined cron tasks. Instead of writing to the support (and being refused), try this module. It will call the cron.php each hour – it depends when the visitors load a page from your website.
DB Maintenance
We all needs/should perform some database optimization tasks from time to time. It is not critical but can help to maintain the database in health state. Optimization could have a positive effect to the website loading time. DB Maintenance module perform the optimization in the scheduled interval automatically.
