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15 modules to improve your Drupal administration and content management experience (D6 & D7) - part II

A continuation of the useful administration modules list started in Part I.

Devel

Used extensively by the developers, devel module can also be very helpful to the site administrators. One of its more popular features is automatic content generation (such as users and nodes) - including media files! Another nice feature is switching between users (for example, to test access permissions). It also integrates well with the admin menu module mentioned in the first part of the article.

To use Devel on Drupal 6, go to admin/generate and choose the type of items to generate (the modules comes with taxonomy, content and users, other modules add more types of content). The module can also delete the existing items (for examples, nodes by type).

Screencast

Friendly Drupal: More Aegir: Installing Barracuda and Octopus

Once again, we're using a fresh install of Ubuntu 11.10 on Virtualbox  for convenience  (it's even easier on a server with a properly resolving domain name).

Note: the god of backups has erased this screencast from the site. I've restored the article but all comments are gone.

Story

15 modules to improve your Drupal administration and content management experience (D6 & D7) - part I

Whether you're on Drupal 7 with it's clean administration theme, or still on Drupal 6, there're ways to make interface more userfriendly and improve the workflow.

Administration menu

Administration Menu module is a must for Drupal 6, but it's still helpful on Drupal 7 as a replacement for the built in admin toolbar. It's main feature is a toolbar with dropdown menus where you can drill down the entire menu tree (you can even add local tasks such as tabs to it). It also integrates with Devel module and VBO (see below) and has more nice features.

Screencast

Windows Tools: Git, Drush with Acquia Dev Desktop

If you need to use Windows for Drupal development, you can still have access to some of the useful Linux/Drupal tools. In this video, we're going to show how to install Acquia Dev Desktop for Windows, then install drush and git. Next, we'll download Drupal project using drush & git and import it into the dev desktop. Finally, we'll take a look at setting up site aliases for drush and installing drush make.

Screencast

Installing Barracuda Aegir

The screencast goes through the installation of high performance Barracuda Aegir stack on Ubuntu. It's going to install and configure Nginx, PHP-FPM 5.2.17, MariaDB or Percona and other necessary components. All you need is a freshly installed server and the script will take care of the rest. You'll also find out about a couple of issues you may run into.

Podcast

Friendlydrupal Podcast 1 - Beginning the Journey

Edit: Sorry for the technical issues, I should have checked the permissions (duh!)

Join Natalie & Matt for the first episode of the Friendlydrupal podcast. We talk about becoming a Drupal and PHP developer, useful books and resources and being a part Drupal community. Oh, and Drupalize.me rocks!

Screencast

Custom contact form with conditional fields using webform and webform conditional

Create a contact form using webform module and webform conditional. Find out how to use different types of fields, setup recipients' emails and have dependent fields on the same page.

The advantage of using a webform is that, unlike with the core contact module, the submissions are saved and you can manipulate the data in different ways. This functionality is available for both Drupal 6 and 7 although there might be slight differences in the interface.

Story

Redirect 403 to User Login (r4032login module).

r4032login is one of those small modules that can significantly improve Drupal user experience. Remember what happens if anonymous users, for example, are trying to access restricted content (such as admin pages)? They see this:

access restricted content

Screencast

Drush Site Aliases and Interactive Shell

In this new Drupal tutorial see how to set up and use Drush site aliases. They allow you to quickly administer your sites or save even more time with Drush interactive shell. Finally, we'll look at the common "gotcha" when using the interactive shell with aegir (or other non-root users).

Screencast

Install Drupal 7 site with Drush

Did you know you only need two (at most) Drush commands to install a new Drupal 7 website? Watch the screencast to learn how.