I upgraded Drupal to 6.1.3 yesterday and had to upgrade a few modules with it. It struck me that maybe I should post an entry outlining the modules I've used, to create different parts of this site. If you haven't arleady tried these modules on a Drupal site, I highly recommend giving them a go. If you haven't given Drupal a go, I highly recommend that too. It's a fantastic open source (ie, free) CMS with amazing support, a huge library of modules and can be customised to do just about anything you could want from a CMS.

• Backup and Migrate. This handy little tool simplifies backing up your Drupal database, preselecting relevant tables and giving you the option to select your own. With the help of Cron (Linux scheduling app), Backup and Migrate can also be set to run whenever you want.
• Pathauto. Pathauto converts Drupal's standard URL's to more human (and search engine) friendly URL's. It does this by creating aliases (ie, human readable forms) for each url and redirecting requests to those aliases. It requires the standard module "Path" and the non-standard module "Token" in order to run.
• Token. The token module is required by Pathauto to create aliases for URL's. It can also be used for other parts of Drupal also.
• Twitter. The Twitter module allows communication both ways with Twitter. You can see an example of it working in the bottom left of this page under "My Twitter Updates". It allows you to associate your Drupal login with a Twitter account and then post an entry to Twiter when you undertake certain actions, like posting a blog entry.
• Captcha. The Captcha module is absolutely ESSENTIAL for anyone who has a site that requires users to fill out forms. It displays an image that is impossible for a bot to read and requests the user to imput the details of the image in order to proceed. This prevents bots from spamming input forms/creating fake accounts etc.
• WYSIWYG. The WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get, or "Whizzywig") module allows you to plugin a support WYSIWYG editor for editing input fields. I use TinyMCE with WYSIWYG, to provide a more user-frieldny experience when creating content, instead of having to writ the raw HTML for each post.
• Views. Views is a very powerful query builder used to display custom tables in Drupal. It is not required by the Twitter module in order to obtain the Twitter module's base functionality (assigning a Twitter account to a Drupal profile) but is it needed in order to display Tweets on a page.
• Admin. The admin module adds its own theme to reorganise the administration side of Drupal and makes things a MILLION times better. It also adds a permanent menu to the top of the page (when logged in as an administrator of course), removing the need to re-navigate the admin every time you want to change a block, or adjust a module etc.

I'm always tinkering with new modules. If you know of a specific module which you think I could use to replace or extend one of the above, please contact me.