Drupal modules to help you with your blocks


Block Class
Block Class is a very simple module that allows you to add custom classes to your blocks. When you add a new block or edit an existing one, you can specify a class (or multiple classes) that will be added to the other generic block classes of that particular block.

I know what you are thinking, it’s not so difficult to write a module that adds custom classes to your blocks. But guess what? You don’t have to write it cause it’s already there.

So do check it out.

Image Block
Another simple module, Image Block makes it easy and fast to put an image in a block. It provides a special type of block you can add in the administration that contains an image field in addition to the regular block content fields like the title, description and body.

You can upload an image, specify the alt and title tags for the image and even add a link behind it. More importantly, you can specify what image style the image should use. And I don’t have to tell you that this integration opens up further possibilities.

So definitely check it out.

Block Group
More on the block management side of things, Block Group provides a nifty functionality to group your blocks into custom admin created regions.

In the block administration, you can add a new block group. That creates a new block and a special region for it. Then like normally you can add other blocks to that region in order to make them part of the group. And if you want to move them all at once, you can just move the block group that you just created.

It’s pretty cool, so check it out.

Block Context
Block Context is a pretty interesting module for managing your blocks on the administration page. There are two main features to it: filtering blocks based on three types of contexts in which they appear (path, note type and role) and quickly assigning contexts without having to go into the block configuration itself. And that is pretty handy indeed if you deal with many blocks.

One drawback to shortcutting the assignment of these contexts is that you can only do it with preexisting ones. For instance, if I have a block that only shows onnode/1, then I can use this shortcut to make it that other blocks are visible only onnode/1 as well. But I cannot add other paths if they haven’t already been declared in the configuration of at least one block.

But all in all, pretty handy so check it out.

Accordion Blocks
The last module I am going to mention here is Accordion Blocks. This is a pretty useful module if you are into the accordion type of effects. The way it works is that you add an accordion block (if you go to admin/structure/accordion_block) to which you can add a number of existing blocks from your site.

When you save the accordion block, a new block is created on your site available as usual. This will display the blocks you added earlier with the accordion effect. So this is also worth checking out.

Drupal modules that integrate with Views


1. Views Slideshow
Although I’m sure many of you already know Views Slideshow, I think it’s a very important module to mention. One of the reasons is that it makes your View result look so different from the old ways we were used to: tabular, lists and horizontal things like this. It creates a slideshow of your rows and the cool thing is that it integrates with other modules and plugins.

2. Views Accordion
Another interesting one if you are looking for cool ways of outputting your data.Views Accordion renders out the rows as you’d expect - in an accordion. It usesjQuery to do this and it is up for quite a bit of customization. It’s a pretty cool module so do check it out.

3. Views Horizontal Slider
We’re going horizontal with this one. Views Horizontal Slider kinda brings the idea of the accordion to a horizontal level. What I mean is that you have a little vertically full teaser of the row content and when you hover over it it expands on the horizontal to be viewed fully while the rest close up. Check out a demo here.

4. Masonry
So you know how the pins on Pinterest look like on the page don’t you? Or actually, how my website’s front page looks and behaves when you resize it? Well the latter is the effect of the Masonry jQuery plugin for which there is a Drupal module that integrates with Views. You can make your View results display in boxes of different size and automatically adjust their position depending on the screen width. Pretty neat no?

5. Views Showcase
As the name suggests, Views Showcase lets you present some content in showcases. In other words, with the help of Views and this module, you can present your nodes kinda like on this website's front page. It’s a pretty useful module if you are looking for something like this.

6. Views Infinite Scroll
Another fancy one. To fully understand what Views Infinite Scroll does, go again to my front page and scroll down. You’ll notice that the articles will keep appearing as you scroll down, without page refresh or anything. Kinda like Facebook. Now this is what can be achieved with the jQuery AutoPager plugin that is used by Views Infinite Scroll to manipulate your View.

7. FooTable
Incidentally this is my favorite solution so far to responsive tables. I once wanted to write this module to implement with Views but I didn’t have time and there was someone else already ahead with the works. The FooTable module implements the FooTable jQuery plugin and makes your View table responsive. In a very useful way I might add.

8. Views Field View
Views Field View is another cool module that although i covered more extensively in a previous post, I thought was important to include in this list. What it does is lets you embed a View as a field in another View. What’s even cooler is that it lets you pass contextual filters via tokens which makes it very powerful. So do check it out.

9. Views UI: Edit Basic Settings
This is a pretty nifty admin module that lets you place a tab on any View that lets users with the right permission change some basic View configuration without having to go into the more complicated View edit page. What can be done contextually is modify the header, footer, title, empty text, or number of items to display. Pretty helpful for sites where some less experienced users have to make some changes.

10. Draggable Views
Draggable Views makes the rows of a View rearrangeable via Drag’n’Drop. Simply put, it uses the tabledrag.js plugin to move around html table elements, and lets you nicely reposition the rows of any table generated by Views. The cool thing is that you can use this module as an ‘admin’ function to arrange the order of other Views.

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