I have recently upgraded my cats idol site to Drupal 6 and enhanced its functionality. I have also created several other sites (including this site) using the following set of useful Drupal modules.
Here is my list of useful (AKA Best IMHO) Drupal modules:
Content Construction Kit (CCK)
The Content Construction Kit allows you to add custom fields to nodes using a web browser. It is really useful if you want to create custom content types and added functionality to your existing content types.
Example of such fields would be:
- computed field: lets you add a PHP-driven “computed field” to CCK node types
- date: creates an ISO or unix timestamp date field
- image field: an image field
- link: a URL field
I used the image, link and File fields and found them useful.
Views 2
The Views module provides a flexible method for Drupal site designers to control how lists and tables of content are presented. Traditionally, Drupal has hard-coded most of this, particularly in how taxonomy and tracker lists are formatted.
This tool is essentially a smart query builder that, given enough information, can build the proper query, execute it, and display the results. It has four modes, plus a special mode, and provides an impressive amount of functionality from these modes.
Among other things, Views can be used to generate reports, create summaries, and display collections of images and other content.
Views are very useful in combination with the Panels module. Also works well with blocks, I use it to create the left and right blocks in Cats Idol
Panels
The Panels module allows a site administrator to create customized layouts for multiple uses. At its core it is a drag and drop content manager that lets you visually design a layout and place content within that layout.
Integration with other systems allows you to create nodes that use this, landing pages that use this, and even override system pages such as taxonomy and the node page so that you can customize the layout of your site with very fine grained permissions.
I use it to create Cats Idol cool front page.
Pathauto
Provides a mechanism for modules to automatically generate aliases for the content they manage. Very important for Search Engine Optimization (SEO) this module automagically generates proper URLs for your content, helping search engines and users find your content more easily.
Voting API and FiveStar
VotingAPI helps developers who want to use a standardized API and schema for storing, retrieving, and tabulating votes for Drupal content. The Five Star voting module adds a clean, attractive voting widget to nodes.
Very useful if you want to provide voting functionality and also sort and view content according to popularity.
AddThis or ShareThis
These are two social network linking modules allowing user to link to content on your site in social networks such as facebook or twitter. At the time this article is written this is a “must have†for every site.
I user ShareThis in Spacebug and AddThis in Cats Idol.
Image module
Usefull if you want to have an out-of-the-box image content types allowing user/yourself to add image base nodes. Integrates with views, voting, blocks and CCK.
Tagadelic
Tagadelic creates a tag cloud for your site taxonomy.
Google CSE
Google CSE replaces the default Drupal search with Google search, Requires Google account.
Token actions
I use this module to provide the functionality of sending notifications to my administrator email about new comments and content added to my sites
I hope you find this list useful. Let me know if I missed anything.