Modules plays an important role in the Drupal eco system. It adds the much needed functionality and build out features lacking in core.
Here is a list of modules that will aid you in building out a website with all the features required to operate a fully functional website to it's fullest.
Modules for administration:
- Admin menu - Exposed all sub naivgational pages as dropdown for easier access
- Client menu - Admin menu as the name implies, is for admin user. If you have other authenicated users (such as site editor or bloggers) that don't require such as high level permission to administer the site, then it is makes sense to offer a user menu.
- Wysiwyg and CKeditor - Add a web content editor, to make it easy to add content
- Simplify - Remove clutter from the vertical tabs
- Admin Views - Replaces administrative overview/listing pages for better usability
- Views Bulk Operation (VBO) - Allow more atcion options to to be executed on the displayed rows
- Module Filter - Help filter module settings page
- Media - For easier managing of files and multimedia assets
- Linkit - Create links to other internal pages
- Smart Trim - An improvement to the '"Summary or Trimmed" formatter
Modules for site building
- Views - It needs no explanation, just get it!
- Bean - Allows you to create custom block types, meaning it treats blocks like content type so you can add fields to blocks
- Backup Migrate - Backup/restore your database. There are additional module for this to backup files as well
- Pathauto - Automatically generates URL/path aliases
- Jquery Update - To enable the use of newer Jquery than the core version
- Masquerade - To switch between different logged in users. Great for when you are testing site access or permission for different roles
- Token - Define your own replacement pattern for values
- Webform - Built webform of all sorts (well, almost)
- Honeypot - Methods of deterring spam bots from any web forms on your website
- Rules - Allows site administrators to define conditionally executed actions based on occurring events
Modules for SEO
- Yoast SEO - Write better content using Yoast SEO for Drupal module (first appear for Wordpress)
- Xmlsitemap - Generate XML sitemap for search engines
- Metatag - Automatically provide structured metadata
- Google_tag - See https://www.google.com/analytics/tag-manager/
- Security_review - Run an audit and review to secure your site
- Redirect - Create page URLs redirects
- Google_analytics - Google Analytics web statistics tracking system
- Linkchecker - Check for broken links on your site
- Search404 - Instead of showing a standard "404 Page not found", this module performs a search on the keywords in the URL
