Beginning Drupal 8

Chapter 11 ■ Drupal Modules
As you can see from these examples, there are thousands of modules that span a wide variety of
categories. The general titles of the categories listed here often do not do justice to the rich features that
are available in the modules that are buried beneath the titles. It often takes research and patience to scan
through the hundreds of modules to find the one that provides the functionality that you need. Complex
requirements may also take more than one module to provide the functionally you need to address a larger
problem. Understanding which modules do what, which modules work well together, and which modules
do not work together is often the hardest challenge of building a complex Drupal website.
A recommended exercise is to visit www.drupal.org/project/project_module, select the “Last release”
sort option for the “Sort by” field, and then click the Search button. The list displayed will show the latest
modules and module updates that have been released to the community. Visit the site every day or two and
read through the description of the newest modules that were added or updated on the site. It only takes a
couple of minutes a day to quickly build up your understanding of the modules and types of solutions that
are available through Drupal’s contributed modules.
A great third-party website that helps solve the issue of finding the right modules is
http://drupalmodules.com. This site provides a Search with Module Finder feature that makes it easier
to look for and find the right module for the right job.
Downloading and Installing a Module
There are three basic approaches for installing a new module on your site: downloading the module files to
your server, using the “Install new module” feature on the module administrative interface, or using Drush.
I’ll cover the first two methods in this chapter and cover using Drush in Chapter 15.
The first step in installing a module is finding the right module to use. As described in the previous
section, there are thousands of modules to pick from; finding the right one is often the biggest challenge.
For demonstration purposes, let’s pick two of the most popular and useful modules: the Google Analytics
module and the Display Suite module. First we’ll download the Google Analytics module by downloading
its files to the server, and then we’ll download the Display Suite module using the section approach, via the
“Install new module” feature.
Downloading Module Files to Your Server
I’ll demonstrate how to install the Google Analytics module by downloading the module file to the module
directory on my Drupal 8 site. The steps are as follows:
1. Visit Drupal.org/project/modules and find the module. You can use the Search
feature or the filters on the Modules page to locate a module, but knowing that
Drupal.org’s standard naming convention for the URLs of modules is to use the
name of the module as the last element of the URL speeds the search for the
Google Analytics module: visit www.drupal.org/project/google_analytics.
2. Scroll down to the Downloads section for the module. You should, in most cases,
select the current release for the module that you are installing. The current
release should be highlighted with a green background. In some cases, you may
need to use a module that is still in development because a stable production
version is not yet available. Development versions are typically highlighted with
a red background and have a version number that ends in -dev. You should use
preproduction (dev) versions with caution, as those modules are not yet fully
developed and have not been thoroughly tested. To download a module rightclick
the tar.gz link for the Drupal 8 version (8.x), and click the Save option
provided by your browser in the pop-up menu. If your Drupal 8 installation is
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