What are modules in Drupal and how are they used?

Drupal is content management software used to create many of the websites and applications we use every day. Drupal has great standard features like easy content creation, reliable performance, and excellent security, plus a choice of modules that makes it stand out from other CMSs.

Drupal started as an open source project in 2001 and gained popularity as the most efficient content management system used to code and develop websites. Approximately 2.3% of online websites are built with Drupal.

Drupal modules may be the particularity that gives it that advantage over other technologies to create CMS pages. Let's take a look at what these are about and how they are used to create a dynamic web page.

What is a module in Drupal?

When speaking of a module in Drupal, reference is made to a collection of files that contain code, which extends the functionality of Drupal by adding new features. The code is created within the site, so you can use all the features and access structures and variables located within the core of Drupal.

The most used modules are the contributed ones, which can be downloaded for free to add to the website and are created by the Drupal community. The Drupal website has a catalog of modules accessible to all its visitors, with the ability to download all packages directly from Drupal.org. For developers' delight, they are available in tar.gz and .zip formats, allowing them to be unpacked after adding the module to the web server.

Importance and uses of Drupal modules

Perhaps the greatest importance of Drupal modules is their very existence: they are packages of code designed to enhance the functionality of a base Drupal installation. The Drupal package, or core, and Drupal 9 comes packaged with over seventy core modules and nine themes.

The core modules, which are among the most used, are located in the modules directory, making up a collection of modules that have been vetted and approved by the entire Drupal community.

The Most Useful Drupal Modules

Among the wide variety of modules that Drupal makes available to its users, these are the most used for different purposes on web pages:

• Views: it is a module that offers a personalized content visualization: of databases, presentations and others.
• Views accordion: it only changes the way in which the content is presented, here in the form of an accordion.
• Panels: this is a module intended for posts in blocks or with more than one view
• Themekey: this is a module whose purpose is the assignment of themes based on previously defined rules.
• Theme editor: modify files, templates directly from the server.
• Mobile tools: Assign themes that meet the requirements to display on a mobile device, such as cell phones and tablets.
• Administration Menu: useful module that generates a toolbar that allows access to site information in a much more intuitive way than the original Drupal module.
• Navbar: friendly and responsive menu, ideal for browsing from mobile devices or from a site with a slow or limited connection.
• Backup and Migrate: module to make backup copies since you have to make sure that certain contents and configurations are not lost.
• Taxonomy Menu: Allows you to create vocabulary in the menu quickly and easily.
• Taxonomy Access Control: Manage access to the taxonomy.
• Taxonomy Manager: helps to manage the taxonomy itself and allows adding extra options.

These are the modules with the most specific functions to improve and enrich any web page where they are applied. Drupal makes hundreds of other modules available to its users, each of them designed specifically for a function in web pages, as well as allowing detailed customization to stand out from the competition.

On their official website, they offer a search engine where you can get any module that suits the needs of the project. They explain “A module is code that extends Drupal by modifying existing functionality or adding new features. You can use modules contributed by others or create your own.”

At Rootstack we have worked extensively with Drupal for the creation of dynamic websites that need constant content updating, our own website was created with this technology. Contact one of our experts to find out all the benefits that this powerful CMS offers.

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