Drupal Plugin Manager: Standing out of the league

Ever since the advent of  Content Management Systems, Drupal has proved its mettle and has emerged as one of the most superior platforms for building corporate websites, personal websites etc.

However, out of a slew of Drupal’s contributed modules, some truly stand out since they have played a pivotal role in giving Drupal a higher status.

Drupal Plugin Manager

Amongst a variety of modules as well as themes present over the web, Plug-in manager module is conveniently navigable, besides it makes download and installation in the Drupal system a simpler task.

The process demands following the straight procedure of downloading the code, unzipping, untarring (a command in Linux) and dropping into your sites or modules directory. This will fetch you all the accompanying modules and contributed themes through the plugin manager.

Assuming you’re not aware, this module not only downloads chosen modules and fiddle with the files, it fortifies the security, via employing an authenticated way to put the constituents in the proper directory. This procedure is an FTP or an SSH, if you’re playing on the local-machine.

Usage

Using Plug-in manager with FTP requires that an FTP server should be running on your local system. In case of a Linux system, it would be relatively easy to set up. For developing it on Windows based machines, the packages such as XAMPP involve FTP servers such as FileZilla. One of the practices could be by setting up a new user for your Drupal instance and then configuring the home directory of the user, so it becomes the root directory of your Drupal instance. Then while configuring the plug-in manager module, you feed in the hostname/Ip of the FTP, Username (if you like) and the path of the file to Drupal’s root. And if the FTP’s user has got root of the Drupal instance as home-directory, then you can rely on the plug-in manager, it will determine the instance by its own.

A slight caution must be observed that is by default the plug-in manager module setup goes for the latest versions of the module/theme you’re attempting to download, which may not be a great choice. A wiser way would be if you can un-check the check-box in the plug-in manager setting which would enable you to choose the module or theme you wish for.

There’s a prearranged list of modules/themes where you can enlarge every category by tapping on the link. You may use the search box to get the modules you’re searching. For instance, if you’re looking for ‘node’, you’d get a string of modules as well as themes that would fit your inquiry. Then on every row in the outcome, you’d see a link to reach the project page.

If you need to look at any particular module then open it in a fresh window. If that’s the one you wish to download- then click on the ‘add’ tab to get the module/theme into your list of downloads.  And after you’re done with choosing things you’re looking to install, push the ‘Install Queued Plug-in’ tab. This would transfer you to the installation part. Given that you’ve un-checked to choose latest version in the setting, you can now choose to release every item you’ve picked up for installing.

After this, you may continue by clicking the ‘Continue to step2’ tab. Reaching here you must keep your FTP account details handy. Enter the host name, Username and passwords; it would be better if you choose to tick the box ‘Save Username’- if you’d be employing that very FTP account for that specific ‘Drupal Instance’. This should ideally turn into a confirmation text about the installation.

If you’re thinking –is that all you have to do? Well the truth is the plug-in manager only downloads and installs the module/theme, doesn’t enable them. For enabling them, go to site building>modules, then exclusively enable the freshly installed module. The same process is applied for themes as well, by going to site building>themes and enabling it.

Conclusion

The Plugin manager has eased up the process of installing themes and modules is true but it also have built in functionality, which makes is convenient to update the particular themes/modules. Plug-in manager offers you a hassle free approach and freedom to have your way.

Written by: Ajeet Yadav on May 15, 2012.
Last revised by: Amit Pankaj