It’s always interesting to look back over the year and see which blog posts were most popular with our readers. For 2012, the most popular posts were a blend Drupal 7 Module reviews, responsive web design trends, using Maps with Drupal 7, and tips on planning a Drupal site.
Without further ado, here are the top 10 blog posts written in 2012—in order of most viewed:
Top Drupal 7 Modules: Summer 2012 Edition
There are literally thousands of modules available on Drupal.org. The funny thing is, most developers tend to use only a small percentage of those modules. So out of 16,000+ modules, many developers have only installed up to 200 different modules across their various projects. Furthermore, you will find that developers continually use only a few dozen of the same modules on almost every project. It's for that reason why from time to time Jay puts together a list of his most-used modules. By doing so, he hopes to help new developers figure out what modules they need by narrowing down a list of 16,000 down to around 50 or so modules.
Control your Drupal Page Layout with Context & Delta
With the Delta module, you can build custom page layouts by making new versions of the theme settings page; then apply those unique layouts on particular pages, sections, or user roles via the Context module. While designed specifically for the Omega theme, Delta will also work with other themes. Mobile Tools can help you to detect users viewing your site with mobile device to further customize the theme just for them. Let's take a closer look.
Responsive Design: Mobile Menu Options
At various Omega presentations Kendall has given at people have asked her about responsive menu options. Brad Frost has outlined some great options for responsive menus, and she encourages you to do your research since it's a always a good idea to review what your options are before deciding on a particular path. Kendall says that using browscap to hide/show your menu(s) is not recommended or necessary since browser sniffing is not very reliable, hence the whole movement toward responsive design.
The Power of Maps and Drupal 7
The way we can create Maps in Drupal is changing. In this webinar James covers utilizing the Geofield and Openlayers contributed modules to create beautiful dynamic maps in Drupal. We explore what Geofield, Openlayers and their supporting modules do, and walk through an easy to follow recipe for using these contrib modules to create custom maps. Finally we cover TileMill and Mapbox, two amazing tools from Development Seed, that help you to design, build and distribute your custom maps, using data from your Drupal website.
The Drupal Maintenance Challenge
In Part 1 of Jay's article on The Drupal Maintenance Challenge & How to Manage It, Jay raised some interesting problems inherent to planning out and executing a Drupal website project. Now in Part 2, he gives some advice on how to address these challenges based on what I’ve learned in my time as a web developer.
Drupal Modules: Display Suite, Context, Views, & Panels
Learn how to use the tools the experts are using! This webinar teaches how to utilize several of Drupal's most powerful site-building modules to build out Drupal websites. In this webinar, Jay goes through each of these modules in-depth, using real-world project walk-throughs. This is not just a how-to on the mechanics of installing and using module 'X'. Instead we will be to answering the question "'Why should I use this module?".
Moving from Wordpress to Drupal
In the battle for CMS dominance, there are three main players in the Open Source space: Drupal, Wordpress & Joomla. This blog isn’t a comparsion between the two, though there are plenty out there. What Jay to focuses on is all of you who have a Wordpress site and want to transition it to Drupal—easily.
Display Suite - A Themer's Perspective
Display Suite is a popular drag-n-drop interface module that allows anyone to easily point and clear their way into creating beautiful layouts in Drupal. It allows users to take complete control over how Drupal renders content without the need for using complicated templates or custom code.