Drupal comes with amazing features built into the Drupal Content Management System. However, the Drupal community has added modules you should add to any Drupal site. If you have purchased a Drupal theme package you might even find some of these modules already in place.

To get started, this is a great tutorial on the basics of installing modules.

1. FCK Editor
One of the most unique aspects of Drupal is that it comes with only a basic text editor. When you first install Drupal all the text-entry boxes used to create content in Drupal are just that — plain text boxes. There are no formatting options. If you want bold, you have to insert the HTML tags to create bold. Fortunately, there are several modules that offer WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) editors that allow you to easily format the text. The FCK Editor is one of the best editors to transform Drupal from drab text editing to full WYSIWYG editing.

Here is a great video to see how to setup this module.

 2. Administration Menu
Administration menu module provides a theme independent administration interface (aka. navigation, back-end) for Drupal. It’s a helper for novice Drupal users coming from other CMS, a real time-saver for Drupal site administrators, and definitely a must for Drupal developers and site builders.

This video provides a great overview, if you know a bit of French.

3. Google Analytics
Google Analytics is a free web analytics tool that shows you how people find your site, how people navigate through it, and how they become customers. Google Analytics is both easy to use and offers an enterprise-class reporting interface. Unless you have analytics in place – you will have no idea how your site is faring.

Check out this video to learn how to install and configure this module.

4. Pathauto
The Pathauto Module is a great module for search engine optimization. It’s also easiest to use and configure when it is installed early in the building of your site. Pathauto automatically generates URL aliases for nodes based on highly-configurable rules. The Pathauto module automatically generates path aliases for various kinds of content (nodes, categories, users) without requiring the user to manually specify the path alias. This allows you to get aliases like /category/my-node-title.html instead of /node/123. The aliases are based upon a “pattern” system which the administrator can control. You can check out this Pathauto tutorial but keep in mind this module really crosses the line into full fledged administration – this module is not for the beginners.

Watch this video to learn more about Pathauto.

5. Views
Like the Pathauto module, you have to explore Drupal a bit before the value of this module will be clear. Essentially the Views module provides a flexible method for Drupal site designers to control how lists and tables of content are presented. The best way to describe views is with some examples: Views will help you: Change the sort order on the default front page view Use the article module and display articles the way you like. Display a block with the 5 most recent posts of some particular type. Display users ‘unread forum posts’ so they can focus on those.

Check out this video to get a great overview.

As you use Drupal you will certainly want to explore other modules – but these 5 will give you a great head start on getting maximum value from Drupal.

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