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Choosing Drupal modules

Modules extend the core, or ‘out of box’ abilities and functionality of Drupal. If you can think of a function or use for Drupal which is not included with a basic Drupal installation, chances are there is already a module to fit the bill. One of Drupal’s primary strengths as a CMS is the vibrant, active community development of modules, as well as core functionality.

  • Community contributed modules can be found via the web here.
  • Register for an account on Drupal.org in order to filter modules by Drupal version
  • The ultra friendly and helpful IRC community support can accessed by visiting the #Drupal-support channel on the Freenode network
  • Can’t find a module to fit your needs? Make your own!

Now to our tutorial; for our purposes it would be best to walk through an actual example. We’ll use one of the most commonly used modules, Views.

How to add (install) a Drupal module

First we download the module. Here’s how to find a module, and evaluate its stability and quality. Also, how to choose the correct release version.

  1.  Navigate to http://Drupal.org/project/Modules
  2. Click on the ‘Browse by name’ tab. Loading this tab can take some time, as you will be presented with a list of all contributed Drupal modules. 
  3. Scroll down to the section for ‘Views’.
  4. Click on the ‘Views’ link to view the full module information page.

Displayed is all the information/links you need to evaluate a module, including: name of maintainer, module description/overview, release versions and a host of support, development and bug/issue tracking links. 

  1. First off, you should read all of the description notes for a module; this is the large block of bulleted text below the module name/maintainer’s name. 
  2. Next, examine the ‘Releases’ table.

On this table you have the module release version (‘5’ meaning compatible with Drupal 5, ‘.x’ meaning compatible with all versions of Drupal 5, and ‘-1.6’ is the version of Views within the Drupal 5 release), the date of release, the size of the module download, a download link and release notes (notes from individual developers detailing issues dealt with or functionality added).

Here you are presented with two main choices: Drupal 5 or Drupal 4.7. This tutorial is aimed at Drupal 5.x users, so obviously you’ll be more interested in the 5.x-1.6 release. Now, you could just go ahead and get this module via the ‘Download’ link, or you could take another minute to make absolutely sure you know what you’re getting into! So in the spirit of gathering all available, useful information before making a tedious, possibly painful-to-undo decision, we’ll explore this module detail page in a bit more depth.

  1.  For the beginner oriented scope of this tutorial we’ll skip the Release notes; Click on the ‘View all releases’ link at the bottom of the ‘Releases’ table.
  2. What will load next is long list of all releases of this module, and a list of release notes for each version.

There are many, many releases for the Views module; from 4.6.x-1.x-dev at the very bottom of the page, to 5.x-1.6 and 4.7-1.6, the most recent releases, at the top. One excellent way to judge the quality and stability of a module is to gauge the number of total releases and the amount of time in between releases; this way you can make some very educated guesses at how much use, support and development is going on for a module. If there are only one, or two or three releases, or if development seems to happen once every couple of years or so, then the module is not in active development, which could mean that it is not used due to negative issues and bugs, or there is little demand for the module, so no one really works on it. Choosing modules is sort of like choosing leftovers to eat from the refrigerator; if there’s an old, dusty module found in the back corner of the contributed modules section of Drupal.org, you definitely want to use caution before consuming!

Next we’ll want to take a look at the module issue queue, which is found via a link near the bottom of the module detail page here:

Here is what a module issue queue looks like:

Notice that this page is a list of bugs, problems and incompatibilities involving ‘Views’ module, sorted by the most recently updated. Assessing a module based on this view is similar to an assessment based on analyzing a set of release notes for a module.

You should always go to view all open issues and take a quick look at the queue to see if there are a ton of issues (which may mean it’s either buggy, or more likely very large/complex and popular), or next to none (which usually means it’s new or unpopular), or see if there are any that would be red flags for your particular setup (ie. an issue declaring that this module doesn’t work with another module you’re using). Combining this analysis with the analysis of related release notes can give you a good overall ‘birds eye view’ of whether or not a module, or specific release of a module, is a good match for you installation. Sometimes you just need to install it, to see if it fits your needs and is working properly, but these steps above should give you another tool in evaluating Drupal modules.

 

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