Jim:

I've been tempted to ask that question for a while now. I had a "hard time" getting through all those podcasts about Drupal. Of course, that was before I became really interested in Drupal. So I've been listening to all those podcasts again. Some of that stuff is like revelation knowledge now! Great stuff!

I'd added some modules, but I'm still trying to "figure it all out"

Shane

How about we make this a user-contributed list as well? I'd be interested to hear what other people are using.

Here's what I'm currently using:
ACL
Administration Menu
Administration Menu Dropdown
Advanced Forum
Advanced Help
Block Theme
CCK
Custom Breadcrumbs
FCKeditor (highly customised with minimal options)
Flat comments
Global Redirect
ImageCache
IMCE
jQuery plugins
jQuery Update
Masquerade (for site architect only)
Mollom
Path Redirect
Pathauto
Persistent Login
Rules
Safari Search
Service links
SimpleTest
SpamSpan
String Overrides
Thickbox
Token with Token Actions
User Protect
Views
Workflow

and, of course, Contrib Toggle
;)
Duncan

+1 from me for a podcast on this also.

@shane - great picture btw!

Hello!!

@Pete - Thanks. I tried making a handsome looking picture
for my Facebook page to
"impress" the ladies.... Uh, it didn't work. I'd have to
look more like George
Clooney. So I tried something silly with GIMP.

I keep hearing that CCK and Views are MUST HAVES

Here are the modules that I added. But please know that I have no idea what I'm really doing, or how to use them yet...Except for the Tetris module.

CCK
Views
Image
ImageCache
Brilliant Gallery
Active Translation
Addresses (cck related, but it needs something else to work)
Advanced help (Thank GOD!)
Advanced help example (Really thanking God)
BUEeditor
ChatRoom (Currently in development. I wanted it to work, but didn't. It just displayed
errors on the website)
IMCE
Lightbox2
Tetris (can be addicting!)

What timing. We already recorded next weeks episodes and we talk about drupal modules for drupal 6. It's about recopies so we talk about modules and how we would set them up.

Already recorded!!! The suspense is going to kill me!

Could have been worse—they could have said, "It's already on the schedule—for April"!
;)

That's great. Thank, Matt!

Just started playing with and LOVING this module: Image Resize Filter.
WOW! If you are using a WYSIWYG, and even if you are not, this is practically a no-brainer module to install!
Check out the demo video at Lullabot.
It automatically resizes images in your content according to the height & width properties in img tags.
Best part, because of the way filters work, it works VERY well regardless of the WYSIWYG editor or even if you don't use one. It is (almost) foolproof!
I honestly think this could be THE ultimate must have module for Drupal right now!

There was a hiccup with the way FCKeditor sizes images (it uses style instead of height/width directly), but that has been corrected and some simple workarounds are available.

The only caveat I have right now is that image resizing does not work quite right in IE7 with WYSIWYGs.
In IE7, dragging the corner handles of an image does not keep the aspect ratio locked.
It works fine in FireFox3.
And, it is broken in both FCKeditor and TinyMCE. This makes me wonder if it is actually an IE issue and not an issue with the FCKeditor or TinyMCE WYSIWYGs.
Anyone know of a solution for IE?

I wanted to point out that a lot of the modules listed above are part of the Acquia Drupal distribution. I've built my personal site on Acquia Drupal, and their bundling of common modules makes less for me to manage when it comes time to do updates.

They leave the sites/all/modules and sites/all/themes directories empty for you to add your own set of modules, so it's relatively easy to keep track of what modules came from which source. I do wish the Update Status page would show which modules were from the Acquia distribution, however, as I constantly have to compare that list against (scroll down on that page to see the contributed modules they bundle).

Hey gang,

I just built a Drupal 6 test site and thought I'd update the list I posted here almost a year ago. I do all of my Drupal work on Linux, especially now that it's so easy to create a virtual server to test using VMware. This also gives me the freedom to use drush to do most of my setup work.

To build the site I did today, I began by using drush to download Drupal core and move it to the desired location.

cd /tmp
drush dl drupal
cd drupal-6.1x
rm -fr CHANGELOG.txt COPYRIGHT.txt INSTALL.* LICENSE.txt MAINTAINERS.txt UPGRADE.txt themes/bluemarine themes/chameleon themes/pushbutton
cp -pvR .htaccess * /webdocs
cd /webdocs/sites/default
cp default.settings.php settings.php
mkdir files
sudo chgrp apache settings.php files
chmod 660 settings.php
chmod 771 files

I then ran through the initial Drupal installation, since drush installcore does not work for Drupal 6.

Next, I went back and secured settings.php, then used drush to download my frequently used modules.

chmod 640 settings.php
cd ../..
drush dl advanced_help backup_migrate blocks404 cck date filefield imageapi imagecache imagefield pathauto quickbar semanticviews token transliteration vertical_tabs views seven

I then enabled only the modules that I was ready to use or prefer to have enabled as a baseline.

drush en advanced_help backup_migrate blocks404 date_api date_timezone quickbar token transliteration vertical_tabs path upload seven

For good measure, I also ran Drupal cron.

drush cron

Navigate to admin/settings/date-time to set my timezone. I highly recommend this, even if you don't use CCK Date fields. (Notice that I have not enabled content or date module yet.) Enabling date_timezone essentially fixes Drupal 6 core's problems with Daylight Saving Time.

To build a starter menu for quickbar, grab the script from https://gist.github.com/1265733 and execute it using drush scr, then select the new Quickbar menu under admin/settings/quickbar.

From here, I'd be essentially ready to configure and build just about any Drupal site.

Micah

Edit 01-29-10 to add core path and upload modules to drush enable, since I now copy and paste from this comment when building new sites.

Edit 07-30-10 to add 404 Blocks and Semantic Views.

Edit 10-23-10 to change "drush enable" to "drush en".

Edit 11-10-11 to change administration from admin module to quickbar module with the seven theme.

Oh man! Wow!

I've been playing around with Drupal a lot more lately. Just installed Xampp on Ubuntu. Not familiar with VMware, but I'll look it up. I even installed Drupal 7, but concentrate on 6 because I'm more familiar with it.

I've been playing around in SSH a lot more lately.... Well, I think it's SSH. I keep having to go back to look up commands and stuff, but I like it. I've even been playing with Vim just because...Well, I don't know. It's kind of cool and efficient.

Looks like drush makes life a lot easier now.

I'm just rambling, but thanks for the post.

Shane

I learned how to use Drush Make yesterday, and so created a .make file last night that matches the info I've posted in the comment above.

core = 6.x
api = 2
 
;normally the next line is all you'd need for Drupal.
projects[] = drupal
 
; Contrib Modules
 
projects[advanced_help][subdir] = contrib
projects[backup_migrate][subdir] = contrib
projects[blocks404][subdir] = contrib
projects[cck][subdir] = contrib
projects[date][subdir] = contrib
projects[filefield][subdir] = contrib
projects[imageapi][subdir] = contrib
projects[imagecache][subdir] = contrib
projects[imagefield][subdir] = contrib
projects[jquery_ui][subdir] = contrib
projects[pathauto][subdir] = contrib
projects[quickbar][subdir] = contrib
projects[semanticviews][subdir] = contrib
projects[token][subdir] = contrib
projects[transliteration][subdir] = contrib
projects[vertical_tabs][subdir] = contrib
projects[views][subdir] = contrib
 
projects[seven][type] = theme
 
; Custom Themes retrieved using git.
;projects[hfccbase][type] = theme
;projects[hfccbase][download][type] = git
;projects[hfccbase][download][branch] = 6.x-1.x
;projects[hfccbase][download][url] = "http://git.drupal.org/sandbox/micahw156/1097980.git"
 
; Libraries
libraries[jquery_ui][download][type] = "get"
libraries[jquery_ui][download][url] = "http://jquery-ui.googlecode.com/files/jquery.ui-1.6.zip"
libraries[jquery_ui][directory_name] = "jquery.ui"
libraries[jquery_ui][destination] = "modules/contrib/jquery_ui"

If you already have Drush installed, then simply use drush dl drush_make to install Drush Make, then execute drush make:

drush make example.make target_path

If everything is working correctly, this will build the specified Drupal installation in the directory specified by target_path.

For a lot more detail on how all this works, check out Dmitri Gaskin's DrupalCon session on Features, Drush Make and Profiler.

Edit 11-10-11 to change administration from admin module to quickbar module with the seven theme.

never forget backup_migrate - can save you a lot of trouble and headache