Finding Modules

Finding Modules with Joe Shindelar In this tutorial, we'll learn how to search for and evaluate modules on Drupal.org. By the end of this tutorial, you'll know how to find and evaluate modules before installing them. Before you get started with this tutorial, you want to make sure that you're familiar with the concept of Drupal as a Content Management System, and that you know what modules are and the role that they play. See the written version of this tutorial for links to each of these prerequisite tutorials. Start by going to Drupal.org and then the header at the top, click on Download & Extend. Scroll down the page, and under the Extend section click on Modules. Filter your search using the categories on the Modules search page. We'll be looking for Actively maintained modules in the Administration category, that are compatible with Drupal 8 For Status, sandbox projects are experimental projects. Full projects have already gone through an approval process but they can still be in development. We're going to choose Full projects in this case. In the Search field, we can enter the text Admin toolbar, a module that will be covered in detail later. Alternatively, you can also leave this field blank, if you're not sure which module to search for. You can order the results by criteria like Most installed, which is popular modules that many sites use or Last release, which is the date of the last version released. We'll leave it as Most installed. Click Search and wait for the filtered results to appear. To further evaluate a module click on its title in the list of search results to visit its project page. When evaluating modules, there are a few important aspects to pay attention to on these project pages. First of all, the project description. The description of the module on its project page should be clear and useful. You should get an idea of its features and requirements. If you scroll down the page, under the Project information section, there's some more useful information. Check for a maintenance status notice. If a module is actively maintained, you can be sure that there will be security updates, bug fixes, and feature improvements provided on a regular basis. If you don't see a status, you can assume it's currently marked as Actively maintained. If the module is unmaintained or abandoned or set to any other status, you'll see a notice here. Also check for a development status. Modules that are currently marked as Under active development will not show a notification. And the other status will show a notice in the Project information section. Here's the current complete list of possible status for those 2 settings. Maintenance status could be set to one of Actively maintained, Minimally maintained, Seeking co-maintainers, Seeking a new maintainer, or Unsupported; while Development status can be set to Under active development, Maintenance fixes only, No further development, or Obsolete. And here's an example of what it looks like to have a module display project information with one of these non-default settings. Another thing to look for: check the reported installs and downloads. You can see how many people have downloaded and how many sites use the module. If it's only used by a few sites, it might be a unique solution that not many people need or it might be a warning sign that you shouldn't use it either. If you scroll back up in the sidebar, check the maintainers; when was the last time someone updated something on the module or the last release, new version. If the project has few open issues, a long time since commits or releases might be appropriate. But if it has a lot of open issues and there are no commits or releases, that would be a clue that it might be abandoned. Check the issues. See if there are any open issues, potential problems with the module. And then check the statistics to see how regularly issues are responded to. You can also scan the available resources. Check if the module has documentation or a readme file that can help you install, configure, explore and test it. In this tutorial, we took a look at the Module search form and learned how to use it to find the type of modules we're interested in. We also examined a project page and walked through the important aspects to consider when evaluating a potential module for your site.