Our Favorite Drupal Modules We Use In Our Web Design to Enhance Our Client's User Experience
The Drupal environment is not only an excellent platform for web design, it also excels at enabling the non-technical end-user to enhance and manage their own content. Three add-on modules we deploy at BlueTech for our customers are the IMCE media manager, the CKEditor and Cloud Zoom modules. These three modules add such power to the design that almost every site uses them in some fashion and where they are in use, our customers and their website visitors enjoy a greatly enhanced web experience.
The IMCE Media Manager is a simple tool that allows a site owner to upload and place images and documents on their site. They can browse and manage quotas and re-use images in a very easy manner which reduces the amount of effort needed to update their website. In many cases they are fully able to make the changes to their website without the need for a professional designer. This not only reduces the cost to maintain a website, it also speeds up making changes to the site.
Website Backend Mojo - Registration, Scheduling and Document Handling
We are all familiar with basic corporate branding websites (the home, about, products and services, and contact pages). Many are aware of the power that Web 2.0 offers these sites. The power to easily add and update content, automatically promote new blog and news posts to the various social channels, and the power to dynamically modify the website's design.
However, did you know that there are many other additional, highly powerful, Web 2.0 solutions available using Drupal 7? I like to refer to many of these other, highly customized, features as the website's “backend”.
I would like to highlight three of my favorite backend features.
Registration system:
Drupal allows us to set up a registration system that automatically handles all data collection, class and event list creation, and registration confirmation. With the added support of an ecommerce module, we are also able to handle all deposits and payments. The quantity of registrations sold may also be limited to the desired event and/or class maximums and these limits can be enforced automatically (eliminating overbooking). Any additional registrants can choose to be added to the wait list and automatically informed if any cancellations open up additional spots.