If you’re a drupaler and you don’t have CCK installed then you are one poor soul. Disclaimer: If you use Flexinode please don’t hate get all hot and bothered. The reason that I chose CCK is because it appears as if Drupal is going towards using CCK for custom content going forward, as can be evidenced in Drupal Version 5. In combination with this point, CCK has the best image attach properties of all the custom content with the imagefield module.
2. Views - If you don’t use Views then your Drupal site is probably very sad.
Views is the module that lets you customize and create webpages and blocks on the fly. For example if you have a website about shoes (like Criticalsole.com) then you can separate pages with shoe articles, shoe pictures, a user’s articles, a user’s sneakers, etc. The best way I can explain it is, if you want to create Flickr clone then Views is the way to go.
3. Tagadelic - Tags are Righteous man!
If you’re designing a Web 2.0 site, shoot, or even a site in 2007 then you absolutely need to have tags. Tagadelic allows your users, and you, the ability to freely tag any post they create. A must for any user-generated content site, that means you too bloggers.
4. Path and Pathauto - SEO out of the box
If you’re like 99.97% of web publishers then your very livelyhood probably depends heavily on Google and other small search engines (yeah I’m talking to you Ask.com, c’mon hook a brother up with some search queries). Anyhow install Pathauto, get Wordtracker, and SEO to your heart’s content. Path and Pathauto are a must if you’re expecting the search engines to start giving you some love.
5. Organic Groups (OG) - Because people love to hang out together
This one is self explanatory. People like to hang out with like-minded people, organic groups allows this. If you’ve ever seen Myspace groups then this is the same thing but much better because Myspace is ugly. Nuff said.
6. Buddylist - Because everyone needs a friend
Buddylist is the module that helped put Drupal on the map. Being able to create Facebook and Myspace clones solely from the existing Drupal install and the buddylist module is entirely possible now. Install buddylist and now all your users can start adding friends and keeping track of their friend’s posts. Warning: buddylist has a lot of little hacks that are not easily found on the Drupal website so be patient and just keep searching you’ll eventually find the hack that allows people to reject friend requests. Or wait a week or so and I’ll just lay it out here.
7. Privatemsg - Keeping Secrets like the CIA
Like the name says, allowing your users to privatemsg each other is huge. Trust me on this one, though be forewarned if your site gets remotely good traffic as the founding web designer your inbox will get full.
8. Guestbook - The “Yo where you at?” module
Friendster started the whole testimonial thing and if you’re building a social network it’s a must have. This is huge for user interaction and overall gives you as the founder a nice way to say hi to your new users. I’ll post how to modify and style the guestbook a bit later. You’ll want to style the guestbook, it’s not the prettiest interface in the world.
9. Logintoboggan - No I do not want to confirm my registration via email
If you’re like me then you get annoyed by all the other websites that make you confirm your email address before you can sign into your account. As someone that has upteen accounts and is always evaluating new web 2.0 companies this causes a significant amount of pain to my brain. Logintoboggan, amongst other things, allows you to have an auto registration slash login. It’s beautiful, install it.
10. Service Links - If a drupal site has no visitors does it exist?
You gotta promote and this is the single easiest way to promote your site. Install service links and you’ll have reddit, digg, del.icio.us, and newsvine links at the bottom of all your nodes. Yeah, maybe this module doesn’t really belong in the Top 10 but c’mon it is pretty cool.
OK, now before you get mad because you didn’t see Aggregator, Profile, or other great modules remember this is a list of modules that DO NOT come with the basic Drupal installation. Feel free to leave comments telling me which modules I completely missed, and which modules you believe deserve props.
