Mediacurrent Top Drupal 8 Modules: Drupalcon 2018 Edition

Welcome to the latest edition of the top modules for Drupal 8! Below I recap my newest list that I presented at Drupalcon, Nashville along with updated descriptions. I have also included labels to indicate which modules are best suited for intermediate users versus modules that are universally easy to install and configure.

As an added bonus I now have all of these modules and dependencies available through Github/Packagist for easy setup. 

Just run “composer create-project mediacurrent/mc_top_modules” to get started in minutes, enjoy!

ESSENTIALS LIST

1. Admin Toolbar (Beginner) - The admin toolbar. It’s a module that you might think would just be in core. We use this on every project because navigating through menus in Drupal is a real pain without rollover menus.
2. Component Libraries (Intermediate) - If you are doing any Twig theming this module is going to help you with your Twig file includes.
3. Devel (Intermediate) - Devel can help you debug problems in Twig templates. Another feature that is handy is the ability to generate dummy content.
4. Entity Browser / Media Entity Browser (Beginner) - The Media Entity Browser module gives you the ability to use a nice little library pop-up to upload, browse and search for different types of media.
5. Field Group (Beginner) - This is a helpful module for cleaning up your content types. You can organize fields into tabs, accordions, etc. to give your content editors a better experience.
6. Google Analytics (Beginner) - Google Analytics is a simple module that allows site admins the ability to easily add basic tracking.
7. Linkit (Beginner) - This module gives you an autocomplete popup inside of Wysiwyg for adding links.
8. Metatag (Beginner) - Maintained by Mediacurrent’s very own Damien McKenna, this module lets you configure all of your meta tags for SEO purpose.
9. Panels / CTools / Page Manager (Intermediate) - Panels is a great site building tool for creating custom layouts with a drag and drop interface.
10. Paragraphs / Entity Reference Revisions (Intermediate) - The paragraphs module is a Mediacurrent favorite for a couple of reasons. Paragraphs are like mini-content types that can handle a variety of use cases.
11. Pathauto / Token (Beginner) - The pathauto module lets you set up clean alias patterns for all of your content. If you want all of your blogs to have the path /blog/[title of the blog with hyphens instead of spaces] - this will be the module that you use.
12. Redirect (Beginner) - Almost every new site needs to incorporate 301 redirects for old page URLs. The redirect module gives site admins an easy interface for creating those redirects in Drupal.
13. Search API (Intermediate) - The Search API suite of modules is a fantastic way to configure your site searches. By default this Search API DB is enabled but you can easily swap out for Apache Solr. The Search API Pages module is also handy for getting a site search up and running quickly.
14. Simple Sitemap (Intermediate) - A pretty easy to configure module for creating XML sitemaps for search engines.
15. Stage file proxy (Beginner) - A great module for downloading images to your local environment auto-magically rather than having to continually migrate those images manually.
16. Webform (Beginner) - This module is awesome because it makes it easy to make any and all kinds of forms on your site. This is a must-have module if you plan on managing forms within Drupal.

NOTABLE MENTIONS

Below are a list of notable mentions that didn’t make the essentials list but are still worth checking out.

1. CKEditor Media Embed (Beginner) - A lot of content out there on the web includes social media callouts. This module makes it a lot to easier to include that content inside of your Wysiwyg.
2. Colorbox (Beginner) - The Colorbox module integrates is a popular lightbox library of the same name with Drupal Views and fields. You will need to download the Colorbox library to your libraries folder, otherwise this module is very easy to set up.
3. Commerce (Intermediate) - If you have done any e-Commerce you have probably heard about the Commerce suite of modules for Drupal. This allows you to add products to your site and checkouts, payment options and more.
4. DropzoneJS (Intermediate) - Pretty much everywhere you go on the web you see a drag and drop upload option. So why not have that in your Drupal project? This module makes it relatively easy to do so but there is some configuration required along with the need to download the DropzoneJS library.
5. Entity embed / Embed (Intermediate) - This module lets you embed any Drupal entity anywhere. The most common use case for this is embedding media within Wysiwyg. When paired with the Media Entity Browser, for example this gives editors a powerful tool for embedding media from a library. Both the Lightning & Thunder distributions have good examples of this implementation.
6. External Links (Beginner) - Over the years we have seen that most clients want the option to force external links to open up in a new window or tab. This module makes that feature request very easy. All you do is check one checkbox and essentially you are done.
7. Focal point / Crop (Intermediate) - The problem we are trying to solve with these modules is supporting different kinds of crops from the same source image. This solution is probably the easiest I’ve found both on the developer and the content editor. This module tries to crop around the focus of the image rather than just arbitrarily cropping from the center.
8. Geolocation (Beginner) - I like that the Geolocation module makes it simple to add a point on a map and have that map render in a field. Easy to input and easy to format, with plenty of options for configuration.
9. Honeypot (Beginner) - Do you ever get spam? While there are a lot of options for anti-spam measures (including captches) this solution has an algorithm that does not burden the end user and is pretty effective.
10. Lightning Install Profile (Beginner) - Lightning is a general purpose Drupal distribution that focuses on the media and editorial enhancements. Not only is it a good started distribution for Drupal development, it is also a good learning tool. It often is easier to learn how to configure and use a module by examining how it’s implemented on a pre-configured distribution like Lightning.
11. Scheduler (Beginner) - The scheduler module lets you schedule the publishing and unpublishing of your content. Note that it is going to use cron to make this happen so you need to verify that your cron is configured correctly.
12. Slick / Slick views / Slick media (Intermediate) - The Slick suite of modules adds functionality to allow site builders to create slideshows and carousels. There are several related modules that integrate with every aspect of Drupal. The hardest part is the initial setup of library dependencies. Once that is done these modules are very easy to configure within the Drupal admin.
13. Taxonomy Access Fix (Beginner) - This project addresses the fact that core doesn’t have granular enough permissions. The Taxonomy Access Fix module therefore adds in additional permissions to fill in the gaps.
14. Viewsreference (Beginner) - Last but not least the Viewsreference module gives editors the ability to select a View from a field. At Mediacurrent we combine this field with a Paragraph type to give editors an easy, flexible interface for embedding Views onto a page.

Did I miss any modules you think should have made this list? Let me know on Twitter at @drupalninja!

Additional Resources
Top Drupal 7 Modules: Final Edition | Blog
Top Drupal Marketing Automation Modules | Blog
Top Reasons to Choose Drupal | Blog