The Best Drupal 8 Modules You Should Be Using

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drupal 8 modules

You chose Drupal 8 as your preferred content management platform to build your website or application. Your colleagues may ask you “Why use Drupal 8 over other content management systems (CMS)?” or “What is Drupal CMS?”

The answer is simple: Drupal 8 offers a variety of powerful modules that make your website more powerful and flexible. As you started exploring the platform, you’ve probably realized that Drupal 8 gives you access to over 40,000 modules

With such a long list of modules, it can be difficult to figure out which ones can benefit your project. Don’t know where to start? Here are some of the best Drupal 8 modules you should consider installing: 

1. Token

You can install the Token module in order to use tokens that aren’t supported by core. It also provides a user interface (UI) method to browse tokens.

If you don’t know what tokens are, they’re the words that are used to fill in a blank. For instance, when you send an email from your website, the recipient’s name could automatically be included in the email if you use a token. Similarly, tokens can be used to generate the current date. 

2. Chaos Tool Suite

The Chaos Tool Suite is a versatile Drupal user module designed to assist you in making custom plugins and exportables. It comes with AJAX responder tools that can take care of AJAX requests and guide you through the next steps. In addition, the page manager module allows you to organize your panel pages as well. 

These aren’t the only features you can use either–form tools, contexts, modal dialog, form wizard, CCS tools, and object caching are other handy components that you can use with the Chaos Tool Suite.

3. Pathauto

Pathauto makes creating URL aliases simple and easy. These aliases are automatically produced by using a set of adjustable custom tokens. By implementing this multi-lingual module, you can create a pattern for any of your website content that has a path–this can include users, nodes, or taxonomy terms. 

4. Paragraphs

The Paragraphs module is an essential asset for any site builder looking to implement compound fields on their website. Using Paragraphs, end-users have access to a variety of paragraph types including text blocks, images, or slideshows. The amount of customization options allows you or your users to mix and match content types within a paragraph.

For example, Paragraphs lets you combine videos, image links, and text. It even allows you to fit in a slideshow between text or other content. Your options are infinite.

5. Views

Views is one of the most frequently used Drupal core modules. Its convenient tools enable you to transfer content from your website’s database and introduce them to your users in the form of graphs, menu items, forum posts, galleries, lists, and more. Other types of content like nodes and users can also be featured.

Views also comes with a submodule that gives you a graphical interface along with an SQL query builder. Using Views UI, you can take any content from your database and integrate it on your website in an endless amount of ways. 

6. IMCE

You can use IMCE in a couple of different ways–use it to upload your images and documents or use it as a browser for your directories. IMCE doesn’t just do simple tasks like upload and delete files, it can also resize images, create thumbnails, and preview pictures. IMCE even allows you to insert a file or an image into text areas.

You can also store files that you have the option of sharing with other users. Edit the constraints for file upload sizes, file extensions, image dimensions, and more. 

7. Google Analytics

As a web developer, you know how important it is to incorporate Google Analytics. You should be relieved to find out that you can still use it when building your website using Drupal. With Google Analytics, you can receive information on how many people are visiting your site, what pages they view the most, and where they were linked to your website. 

Installing the Google Analytics module will give you marketing statistics right on the Drupal interface. 

8. Devel

Devel has four Drupal modules in one. It contains various submodules that can be helpful when developing your content management system project:

Kint

Kint is a powerful submodule used for debugging. It shows all of your debugging data in a clean, easy-to-read format.

Devel Node Access (DNA)

DNA is especially beneficial if you specialize in developing node access modules or if you debug module issues. This submodule gives you information about node access entries that are displayed on a page.

WebProfiler

What if the footer on the bottom of your webpage could contain essential information? When you use WebProfiler, you can view cache performance, database queries, Views, resource usage, and more right on the footer. 

Generate Content

Building your website can be much faster with Devel’s content generation. Use it to swiftly create terms, users, comments, and nodes.

9. Backup and Migrate

Stop worrying about your Drupal database being compromised, and install this module to backup all of your data. Backup and Migrate can secure and restore your entire Drupal MySQL database, files, and code. You can even choose to shift a site to different environments.

Backup and Migrate allows for gzip, bzip, and zip compressions. It also supports automatically scheduled backups and lets you save database tables on a server, as well as restore them. The only downside to this module is that it only includes basic features on Drupal 8–if you have Drupal 7, the module has full functionality.

10. Honeypot

Honeypot is a module that prevents pesky spam bots from filling out any forms on your website with tools that are less intrusive than CAPTCHAs. User registration, password reset forms, contact forms, comment forms, and others are all supported by the module, ensuring that no spam bots get access to your site.

Installing Essential Drupal 8 Modules

Becoming familiar with some of these Drupal 8 modules can streamline your web development process. Soon, you’ll have an accommodating Drupal content management system that runs smoothly and looks clean. 

Looking to expand your Drupal 8 knowledge? Check out some of the top themes you can use on Drupal.