Add new functionality with smart defaults to Drupal CMS with Recommended add-ons.
Want to add a blog or events to your site? Need to add a search feature or industry standard analytics? Recommended add-ons allow you to add functionality to your site preconfigured with smart defaults, which you can modify as you wish. Recommended add-ons are composed of vetted community-contributed projects (also known as modules) and are pre-configured based on the collective experience of the Drupal community.
Terminology alert: You may notice the terms recommended add-ons, recipes, and smart defaults used to refer to the concept of applying a set of configuration (modules, settings) to a site in order to quickly to add new functionality to a site with smart defaults already applied.
What happens when you install a recommended add-on?
Recommended add-ons are an automated way to quickly add functionality or a feature to your Drupal CMS site that would otherwise require an administrator to click together via the UI. Add-ons are an efficient way to get started with Drupal CMS’s vast feature set without having to understand all the details.
When you add new features using recommended add-ons (Extend > Recommended (admin/modules/browse/recipes)), Drupal CMS will ensure that all the required modules are present, and then apply preconfigured settings. It may also include demo content which demonstrates the newly installed add-on. Once installed, your existing site will reflect those changes as if you had made them manually.
Once the recipe has been installed, you can update any of the settings to meet your requirements.
Add a feature with a recommended add-on
Add new features with recommended add-ons by locating them in the Extend > Recommended (admin/modules/browse/recipes) area and then installing them.
- Navigate to Extend > Recommended (/admin/modules/browse/recipes).
- For each add-on you want to apply, select the Install button. The recommended add-on will be installed and its configuration applied to your existing site.
Tip: Remember back when you first set up Drupal CMS and were asked what kinds of content you wanted to have on your site? Those options are all provided by recommended add-ons. If you chose to use any of them at that time, you’ll see them listed here as already applied.
Wrap-up
Recommended add-ons are a way to quickly add functionality or features preconfigured with smart defaults to your site. They offer a balance between Drupal CMS’s signature flexibility and the amount of time it can take to get something started. Recommended add-ons can be applied via the UI, after which the resulting modifications to your site can be customized for your specific use case.
Additional resources
- Drupal Recipes (Drupal.org)
- The Comprehensive Guide to Drupal Recipes (kanopi.com)
