Modules of the Month: September - More interesting new Drupal modules

Categories: Search

The Apache Solr Exclude Node module, by Jens Beltofte of Propeople, helps to exclude individual nodes from Apache Solr, which can be useful when you have indexed a specific content type, and want to exclude a few nodes of that type. A checkbox, “Exclude from Apache Solr” is added to the node edit forms for selected content types. It requires Apache Solr Search.

Status: There are stable releases available for both Drupal 6 and Drupal 7.

Categories: Administration, Developer, Project management, Utility

The Architecture module, by Sheldon Rampton of DrupalSquad, provides reports documenting how your Drupal site is architected. These reports include “Site Entities”, which lists all content types, taxonomies, and other Drupal entities that have been defined for your website with a list of all fields for each fieldable entity; “Site Taxonomies” lists all taxonomies and their associated terms; and “Site Variables” lists all variables and their values. The purpose of this module is to provide some easy-to-read documentation of how your site is put together.

It looks like there are a number of other interesting features in the development roadmap, but this already looks very useful for documenting the way a complex Drupal project is put together.

Status: There is a development release available for Drupal 7.

Categories: Content, SEO

The Attribution module, written by Marcus Deglos of Techito, adds configurable attribution text at the bottom of your site content’s body field, so that if it’s scraped, attribution will normally be included.

Status: There is a development release available for Drupal 7.

Categories: Site Navigation

The Better 404 module, contributed by Yvan Marques, is based on an article from A List Apart. It aims to provide more useful information when a visitor reaches your 404 page.

Status: There is a stable release available for Drupal 6. This looks very promising, so I’m hopeful there will also be a Drupal 7 release and that perhaps functionality like this could be part of Drupal 8 “core”.

Categories: Community, Content, Evaluation/Rating

The Commons Like module, by Ezra Barnett Gildesgame of Acquia, allows users to “like” content and comments using the Commons “Like” widget and the Rate module and VotingAPI and has a stated goal to be expanded to be useful on sites that are not on the Drupal Commons distribution.

Status: There is a development release available for Drupal 7.

Categories: Content, Evaluation/Rating

The Conditional Flags module, coded by Sebastian of Taller, provides additional API features for the Flag module, for custom conditions between flags, so that logically, if, when one flag is set, another flag should be unset, this can be done automatically. There are also plans to build a user interface for site builders.

Status: There is a beta release available for Drupal 7.

Categories: Administration, Content, Utility

The Content Tab module, coded by Ashish Thakur of Srijan Technologies, India, makes it easy for site administrators or other users with appropriate permissions to view the content written by a particular user; it provides a page with sub-tabs for each content type created by a given user and a tab on each user page which lists all content written by that user and eliminates the need to build up this kind of functionality with Views. It also provides a admin UI to configure various display options, among other features lacking in the core “Tracker” module.

Status: There is a stable release available for Drupal 7.

Categories: Developer, Import/Export, Utility

The Deploy Services Client module, by David Rothstein of Advomatic, provides a Services client which communicates with Deployment endpoints and helps perform other operations on the content which the Deployment module does not directly support such as deleting or unpublishing content on an endpoint. Note that this is an API for developers only; there is no user interface.

Status: There is a beta release available for Drupal 7.

Categories: Drush

The Drush Permissions module, created by Klaas Van Waesberghe of dotProjects, enables Drupal site administrators to easily query user permissions from the command line. It can display reports of all permissions with module and role filters, identify if a user has a given permission, or list all roles a permission is assigned to. It is not actually a module (but I’ve included it here since, like Drush, it’s on Drupal.org as a module and looks pretty darn useful). It should not be installed as a module, but as a Drush plugin, i.e. use drush dl drush_permissions to install, but from outside a Drupal root directory.

Status: There is a development release available for Drupal 7.

Categories: Mobile, User Access & Authentication

The eKaay - QR Code Login module, written by Daniel Wehner of erdfisch, allows users of a Drupal website to log into their accounts by scanning a QR code on the PC screen with a smartphone, thus streamlining the login process for users on devices where entering username and password tends to be less convenient.

Status: There is a development release available for Drupal 7.

Categories: Search

The Facetapi Multiselect module, another contribution from David Rothstein, provides a multiselect widget plugin for the Facet API module which allows faceted searches to use a multiple select dropdown for drilling down into the search results. It’s primarily designed to help integrate faceted search with JavaScript plugins such as the jQuery UI MultiSelect Widget (where this module has primarily been tested), jQuery UI Multiselect, and Chosen.

Status: There is a beta release available for Drupal 7.

Categories: Administration, Fields, User Access & Authentication

The Field UI permissions module is yet another coded by David Rothstein. It provides independent permissions for managing fields attached to each type of entity so that you could, for example, give an “administrator” role permissions like “administer users” and “administer taxonomy” but reserve the rights to modify the underlying field structure for a “developer” role. This could certainly be handy for complex use cases.

Status: There is a beta release available for Drupal 7.

Categories: Administration, Community, Content

The Godwin's Law module, by Tobby Hagler of Phase2 Technology, is helpful for managing online forums and allows you to automatically moderate threads and close the discussion when certain keywords are found. By default, the module is set to close comments when Godwin’s law is invoked, but other keywords can also be used as triggers.

Status: There is a stable release available for Drupal 7.

Categories: Administration, Developer, Utility

The Hide Site module, developed by Barry Fisher of Real Life Design, provides a way to practically hide a particular version of a site from search engines even though it’s on a publicly-available development server without needing to patch your .htaccess or robots.txt files. Getting into the particulars of how it works is beyond the scope of this article, but it’s fairly simple to configure and should help keep a site out of the public eye until you are ready to officially release it.

Status: There is a beta release available for Drupal 7.

Categories: Content Display, Fields, Theme Enhancements

The Image or Video field formatter module, developed by Chris Cohen of Tigerfish Interactive, adds a field formatter for a media field that can either be an image or a video and allows for separate thumbnails depending on whether an image or a video is displayed, e.g. so that you can show a “play icon” over thumbnails for video. The shadowbox Javascript library is used to display the full image or video when the thumbnail is clicked. The media module is normally used in conjunction with this, but other configurations are possible. Setting this up is non-trivial and the full details from the module description and README file should be consulted.

Status: There is a stable release available for Drupal 7.

Categories: Content, Community, Evaluation/Rating

The Live Feedback module, written by J. Renée Beach of Acquia, is similar to Google+’s feedback system; it leverages the html2canvas library to allow users to quickly report issues to site maintainers from within the context of the page where the issue occurred. By making it easier for users to report issues with all the detail needed for developers to replicate and resolve them, this module helps ensure that issues do get reported and resolved.

Status: There is a development release available for Drupal 7 and given that Acquia is behind this work, we can hope that Drupal 8 might actually include such functionality in core.

Categories: JavaScript Utilities, Third-party Integration

Masonry is a dynamic grid layout plugin for jQuery. Think of it as the flip-side of CSS floats. Whereas floating arranges elements horizontally then vertically, Masonry arranges elements vertically, positioning each element in the next open spot in the grid. The result minimizes vertical gaps between elements of varying height, just like a mason fitting stones in a wall.

From masonry.desandro.com

The Masonry module, written by Peter Anderson of PackWeb, makes the jQuery Masonry plugin available to Drupal as a library. It contains sub-modules for integrating with fields and Views; its field formatter allows you to display multi-value fields in a Masonry grid layout and integrates with existing formatters so existing formatter-specific options, e.g. Colorbox settings, are retained. It currently supports the field types: image, “long text” and “long text with summary”, and like most modules which integrate a Javascript library, it relies on the Libraries module. The Field formatter settings module is also required for the Masonry field formatter and of course Views is required for Masonry views. Add the Masonry javascript and configure according to the directions on the project page.

Status: There is a development release available for Drupal 7.

Categories: Developer, Performance and Scalability

The Memory profiler module, written by Tim Hilliard of Acquia, logs peak PHP memory usage to the Drupal watchdog and is light-weight enough it shouldn’t add to the memory errors you would be trying to resolve when you activate it. It can be used in a production environment, where enabling Devel would not be appropriate. Knowing this is available when we need it will make all Drupal developers sleep easier.

Status: There is a stable release available for Drupal 7.

Categories: Content, Content Display, Mobile, Theme Enhancements

The Mobile Switch Block module, coded by Siegfried Neumann, extends the Mobile Switch module with a theme switch block with links to manually switch between your mobile or desktop theme and is compatible with Mobile jQuery. Of course it requires Mobile Switch (version 7.x-1.4+) and Respond.js is recommended. The block could be especially useful for people testing the site, but can also provide better options for users of mobile devices who might, for whatever reason, prefer to use your site’s desktop theme rather than the automatically-selected mobile theme.

Status: There is a beta release available for Drupal 7.

Categories: Fields

The Password Field module, created by James Sinclair of OPC IT, provides for creating fields that store passwords, stored in encrypted format and (by default) will not display them on the website. This is useful, for example, if you are creating a website that integrates with other services and you would like users to be able to store their password more securely than using a text field, so could certainly be useful in unusual use cases. That said, the module description also bears a strong reminder not to use this module if you have any alternative.

Status: There is a beta release available for Drupal 7.

Categories: User Access & Authentication

This is still an experimental module, and using it on production sites is not recommended.

The Passwordless module, written by Antonio Savorelli of Communikitchen, provides a replacement for the standard Drupal login form to allow logging in without using a password. Instead, every login is done via a “one-time login” link, as if the user had forgotten their password. This could be useful on sites where users are not expected to log in very often, but there are still a few things about the way this works that makes me nervous; e.g., currently you need to confirm a change of email address at the new address, but not at the old address, which would make it simple for someone who jumps on your computer, while you are logged in and your back is turned, to take over your (Drupal site) account. That said, as it’s still considered experimental and not for use on production sites, we can hope such issues are addressed by the time this module is released as “stable”. Once that’s true, I can certainly imagine using this for some sites.

Status: There is a development release available for Drupal 7.

Categories: Content, Rules, Utility

The PDF Archive module, authored by Brian Gilbert of Realityloop, allows you to generate PDF archives of any entity; generation is triggered by Rules actions and you can configure the entity view mode and role of the simulated user for each rule. It includes a Feature as an example for configuration and otherwise requires the Libraries API module, with TCPDF library installed, and the Rules module.

Status: There is an RC release available for Drupal 7.

Categories: Content Access Control

The Permissions per Webform module, written by Daniel Imhoff of UW-Platteville, lets you set standard (normally global) Webform permissions for each individual Webform, e.g. “Access webform results”, “Edit all webform submissions”, “Delete all webform submissions”, “Access own webform submissions ”, etc. It adds a “Permission settings” fieldset tab to each Webform node.

Status: There is a development release available for Drupal 7.

Categories: Content, Mobile, Rules, Third-party Integration

The PixGather module, developed by Mike Kadin of Merlin Education, is a Drupal Module and PhoneGap application that allows users to easily upload photos to your Drupal site. It was developed so that guests at a wedding could share their pictures, but it’s suitable for a variety of use cases. Currently, the mobile app part of this is only for Android, but an iOS version is planned.

Status: There is an alpha release available for Drupal 7.

Categories: Developer, Utility

The Plugin tools module, written by Chris Skene of PreviousNext, allows developers to browse the various plugins provided by different modules, information normally hidden in the code. The Drupal 7 versions supports Chaos Tools plugins, but it’s possible that a Drupal 8 version will work with “core” plugins. See the project page for more details, but this definitely looks useful for developers working with cTools.

Status: There is a beta release available for Drupal 7.

Categories: Content Display, Developer, Utility

The Render As module, by Stuart Clark of Realityloop, allows you to see page elements as they will be displayed to various users or roles without needing to switch users. Using it is not easy to succinctly summarize, so you should check the project page for directions, but this definitely looks like a useful project for developers and site builders.

Status: There is a beta release available for Drupal 7.

Categories: File Management, Media

The Resumable Download module, authored by Sina Salek adds support in Drupal for resuming incomplete downloads, which could be very useful for users on slower connections or for larger downloads and provides a number of useful configuration options.

Status: There are beta releases available for both Drupal 6 and Drupal 7.

Categories: Developer

If you are not a Drupal programmer, then you may stop reading now. Just enable this module if another module tells you to.

The Session Cache API module, written by Rik de Boer of flink, is a simple two-function API for programmers to cache and retrieve pieces of user/session -specific information, and works well even with anonymous users in a cached environment. It is not for caching large amounts of information or content, nor should it be used for anything sensitive, but definitely looks interesting as a replacement for the $_SESSION variable, which may not an option with Varnish or similar caching engines. Developers who find this short summary of interest should definitely read the directions on the project page because using this is not exactly trivial.

Status: There is an alpha release available for Drupal 7.

Categories: Developer, Statistics, Utility

The StatsD module, developed by Owen Loy of Acquia, provides Drupal integration for StatsD and is intended for sites that have an existing StatsD / Graphite setup. It’s preconfigured to send statistics for Watchdog entries, user logins, page views, and active user sessions, but developers can also configure it to send custom statistics. It definitely looks useful.

Status: There are beta releases available for both Drupal 6 and Drupal 7.

Categories: Administration, Utility

The Suggested Modules module, written by Kevin Quillen of Inclind allows module maintainers to enter a “suggests” property to their module info file, with a link to a relevant module project page. This is a step down from “required” modules; it simply suggests other modules one might normally wish to use in conjunction with your module. Of course, for this to work, modules both need to have “suggests” entries on their .info pages, and users need to have this module installed and enabled. I think this is a great idea and could well be an improvement in “core”; otherwise, until it’s widely used by both site builders and coders, it won’t be very useful. Actually, combining this with Module supports (which still needs a Drupal 7 release) is a more likely future development; in any case it would be helpful if we got such functionality into Drupal core.

Status: There is a stable release available for Drupal 7.

Categories: Administration

The System Status AJAX module, contributed by Chris Pliakas of Acquia, a small module which loads the system status check via AJAX so that the admin/config page is rendered more quickly, even when some of the status checks are delayed. Nice! I’m hoping this functionality is going into the System module in Drupal 8; in the meantime, this should definitely improve the user experience for Drupal 7 site administrators.

Status: There is a stable release available for Drupal 7.

Categories: Features Package, Theme Enhancements, Utility

The Textbook module, coded by the prolific Bryan Ollendyke, of Penn State University as part of the ELMS Initiative, provides Features which include CSS styles, WYSIWYG settings, and CSS3 page templates to help any theme provide consistent textbook styling for the production of online course materials. Users don’t need to be expert in CSS / HTML, but even experts should find this helps streamline their development. If you are producing an online learning site, this module, along with many others by this fine contributor, should be very useful.

Status: There is a beta release available for Drupal 7.

Categories: Administration, Event, Location, Multilingual

The Timezone Picker module, written by Nathan Haug of Lullabot, provides a JavaScript-based timezone picker to replace the default Drupal timezone list with a clickable world map to select a user’s timezone and Geolocation support for compatible browsers, so setting a timezone is greatly simplified. Enabling it replaces the default timezone list on the site’s “Regional settings” page and user profile pages. All Javascript is included; no libraries need to be downloaded and quicksketch also wrote this to be mobile-friendly. Very cool!

Status: There is a stable release available for Drupal 7.

Categories: JavaScript Utilities

The Typo module, developed by Roman Arkharov, provides a simple way for site visitors to report typographical errors in your site content; all they need to do is select text which includes a typo and press Ctrl + Enter to automatically notify the site administrator. It includes preset Rules events you can use, as well as Views for administrators to see a list of reported typos, among other useful integrations. This could definitely be worth checking out.

Status: There is a development release available for Drupal 7.

Categories: Fields, Views

The Views fields combine module, contributed by Stefan Borchert of undpaul, allows you to combine the output of Views fields, separated by any desired custom text. Normally you would do this with "Global: Custom text", however if one field is optional, your output would include an unwanted separator. Once this module is enabled, you’ll have access to a new field type, "Global: Combined fields", where you can select the fields you would like to combine.

Development on Views fields combine is sponsored by undpaul.

Status: There is a stable release available for Drupal 7.

Categories: Content, Content Display, Third-party Integration

The Weather block module, developed by Antti Alamäki of Soprano Brain Alliance, provides blocks and pages in which you can display forecasts from Yahoo Weather, World Weather Online, or weather.com and may include additional future service integrations. Drupal 7 needed more support for weather forecast integration, so it’s good to see this and I’ll certainly be giving this a try on sites where I might want a Weather block.

Status: There is a stable release available for Drupal 7.