Good modules

create many nodes from one upload

If you ever need to upload a bunch of images and you want to be able to deal with them as separate nodes, the bulk media bulk media upload mod is for you. all of the nodes below were created in one simple upload. the mods use tokens for replacement patterns for the titles so that you have a lot of simplicity in regards to the naming of the nodes. this is a great way to get a lot of work done quickly.

Bulk Media Upload

7.x-1.x-dev

With Bulk Media Upload you can upload a bunch of media files and a new node will be created for every file.

Requires: Entity API (enabled), Plupload integration module (enabled), Token (enabled)

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Quicktabs with CSS

Quicktabs is one of the best modules that I have found as far as getting a really nice, tabbed-style, JQuery layout. The mod comes with several different style, out of the box, and it wasn’t too hard to add some cool customizations via CSS. The bottom image is the way the Nav tab style looks out of the box. It gives a nice cle

an vertical set of links. But what I really wanted was to have images along with some text to make the menu look sharp. There are some files in the modules CSS folder that I overrode in the .info file. Some of the changes I was able to make in my own custom CSS file. There appear to be a few issues with the “active” LI items vs the non “active” items. But, i was able to get this to work without too many issues. VERY NICE MODULE.

Quicktabs – AJAX, Views and Panels

This module turned out to be a a real blessing for me. My site offers the ability to research news, court cases and legislation. As this content is viewed, my users are able to drag and drop links, text, pics, pretty much whatever and then save the node as a custom content type.

Originally, I was faced with the idea that each type of content was going to have a separate “Notes” area. This was OK but not ideal. Drupal users AJAX quite a bit so I started digging around and found Quicktabs. You can see from the ss below that this module allows you to place content in tabs areas for easy organization and quick access. It uses JQuery and AJAX (It also uses a non-ajax mode) to allow seemless loading of all sorts of content. For me, I really need to be able to display Views. This is not a problem and with the View that is being displayed enabled to use AJAX as well, allows for a really great way to see content without having to do page refreshes.

Quicktabs as an install base of over 35k so it is well-vetted. GREAT module.

Panels Ajax Tabs

This module is so cool. Ajax is an awesome way to display/update/refresh content without actual page refreshes. And this module gives you a very easy way to integrate Panels and Ajax

Panel Ajax Tabs – https://drupal.org/node/1796032

I’m really surprised that there aren’t more installs of this awesome module. Anyway, using this, I am able to integrate tabbed Panel Panes (which for me are different Views) using minipanels into an Ajax enabled Pane, of sorts.

This allows me to display several different Views on one screen without having to do page refreshes.

Great Module Article

I haven’t been posting as much lately because I have been neck deep in taxonomy, Organic Groups, and other ways to relate content to each other. This is a great article that addresses an ever-present Drupal need: what modules to use. With so many modules, it’s hard to see the forest for the trees. So any article that addresses this as a summary is worth a look. Check it out.

http://www.mediacurrent.com/blog/top-drupal-7-modules-summer-2012-edition

Thanks to this guy for the article!

Jay Callicott | Product Manager, Lead Architect

Manage System Messages

The standard Drupal system messages are really intrusive once you start to customize your site via Panels and CSS. For me, the green boxed messages push my pages down and break the presentation. Plus, they just don’t look very… NICE. So here is a great module. Nice Messages leverages the JGrowl JS library make the normal messages appear as in the SS below. There are even options on where the message should appear and how long. VERY NICE!

Me Alias Module and replacement pattern for the UID

Now that I can hide menu tabs, I need to be able to recreate what some of them do in the menus that I want them in. And the user edit menu tab is a good example. the path that is listed in the shortcut is /user/%/edit. but this relies on a function to get the uid in place of the %. So you can’t simply make a menu item that points that way. But, I found a great module called Me Aliases that allows you to use tokens in a very easy way. Just install the module and you can use the path alias of me to get the uid of the current user. So you can create a normal menu item that points to /user/me/edit and it will take that user to the edit section of the user’s account. VERY NICE. And easy. No configuration, just installation of the Token module.

http://drupal.org/project/menu_token – this is another module that might provide similar functionality

Menu Tabs – Tab Tamer

well, i am making progress on customizing my user profile pages. but one of the things that has been really tough has been the tabbed menu items on the user account pages. they aren’t a part of any menu that can be edited easily – not from Panels or from the Menu admin areas, which are already a little trying as it is. So I started to look to the page.tpl.php file for my theme. Since menu appearance is just that – appearance – they should be handled at the theme level. Here is a stackoverflow article about that concept.

But then I also found this – Tab Tamer! This is a really cool, pretty easy to use module that will allow you to Enable/Disable/Hide any and all tabbed menu items, including the ones on the user account page. Worth checking out.

Scroll to Top Function

Some of my search result pages can get pretty long. And there is a nice, very simple module that will give you the auto-return to the top thingy that is so nice and convenient:

Scroll to Top was the easiest module to install ever. You literally just enable it and it starts to work. Very nice. Now, on long pages you get a floating up arrow in the bottom righ hand side of the page that will allow your user to get back to the top quickly.

External Links in a new window – site wide with additional options

Such an easy thing. adding a target=”_blank” to your link so that it opens in a new window and doesn’t take your user from your site. This is something that you would normally do in the a href tag but in Drupal, it isn’t quite that easy. But, “There’s a module for that!”… and that is the extlinks module. Small, and a user base of 44k. easy choice. Goes under good modules.