[support] Favorite modules - recommendation

[Jeff]

Hi Jorge,

On 30 Apr 2011, at 4:47 AM, Jorge Biquez wrote:

> Hello all.
>
> I am learning and studying Drupal. Actually on version 7 since my
> hosting company (with CPanel) only provide version 7 as option for
> instaltion with Fantastico. I have been playing with version 7, it
> works, have had some issues that are very simple and do not work
> (like having a menu link under a parent one, it just lost the child
> menu and does not appear in any place. Anyway I am not sure if it is
> a Drupal BUg or I am doing something wrong. Since I can install
> rapidly I am starting from zero again to se if maybe I damaged
> something in some way.
>
> For starters. Do you think it is better to downgrade to 6 (I can
> install it manually). Or continue with 7?

Depends. *lol*

> I have read that 7 is better and easier to learn for newbies.

 From what I've seen, it's sweet. The one thing I like most about 7 is  
that user profiles are more tightly integrated and can be taxonomy  
tagged. (Haven't really got a working prototype yet, but for me that's  
a clincher.)

> What would be your advice?

Well I cheat a little and try to find nice themes that do everything  
for me. Not that I can't CSS, but life is too short to push pixels  
around, and I'm too old. ;)

Check out  Danland. It's a great theme.

There are many more out there, but you have to play with them to find  
the one that suits. (I really like that drupal.org lists the themes by  
downloads. So you get an instantaneous idea of popularity and traction.)

As far as recommended modules go, it's so hard to say, since it varies  
from site to site. But modules I can recommend are (in no particular  
order, and some I purely list as dependencies - or best guesses - as I  
can't claim any working knowledge whatsoever :):

CKEditor
WYSIWYG
Views
CTools
Pathauto
Token
Insert (or Imagepicker)
Colorbox
OG
ACL
Petition
VotingAPI
Flag
Date
Search 404
Logintoboggan
Nodetype
Mollom
Blockanonymouslinks
Notifications (OR subscriptions! I haven't worked my head around these  
2 satisfactorily yet.)
Google Analytics
Google Adsense

Facebook / Reddit / Digg (um.. whatever),  etc integration modules  
(Recommend/Like) are not on my priority list right now - but they may  
also be a good exercise for you...

Important: If you do go back to Drupal 6, be sure to standardize on  
filefield and imagefield, as they are included in Core 7, and will  
make your upgrade path approachable.

I hope you don't mind, but I've hijacked this thread slightly in the  
hope that others will recommend their favorite modules, too?

HTH