Drupal 7, From the Ground Up, Part 4

Next in building my site from the ground up, I'll add the administration overlay. This is provided by default in the standard Drupal installation, but is available only to administrators. The administrative overlay is nice, and makes working with content a much nicer experience. So, I want my editor to be able to use this interface as well.

I added two core modules in order to get this functionality: "Overlay" and "Toolbar". Once added, the administrator has access to a toolbar menu that is superimposed at the top of the browser window. Also, all administrative and content management functions appear in an overlay rather than directly in the site.

The standard installation also includes a shortcut menu that appears under the administration menu at the top of the screen. Enable the "Shortcut" module to add this menu. By default, this menu includes "Add content" and "Find content" items, menu items I use regularly.

Enabling the module "Contextual Links" gives you the gear icons that appear when you hover over various page elements. These give you convenient menus for editing and configuring content and blocks. After enabling this, however, I found that they only worked for the administrator user, not the editor. Having not found an option to enable this for the editor user, I left this issue un-pursued.

Now, I want to give permission to use this interface to users with the "Editor" role. Simply go to People/Permissions and check the boxes next to "Overlay/Access the administrative overlay" and "Toolbar/Use the administration toolbar". This will give editors access to this interface, and most notably, the permission system only allows the editor to have access to the functions to which they are entitled.

Having this in place, we can modify the blocks (under Structure) for "Navigation" and "Management" to be hidden, as this functionality appears in the administrative toolbar. Of course, disabling these two blocks assumes that only administrators and editors would have a need for them.

This just about rounds out the functions I typically use in sites that I build. Most sites I build do not use the "Comments" module, but that is easily added if necessary. I routinely add the "Views" and "Views UI" modules, as I find these essential to most of my sites, although they are not part of the core.

The purpose of this exercise which resulted in this four-part series was to learn about which core modules add the functionality of the standard Drupal 7 installation that I actually use in most sites. In practice, however, I will routinely start with the standard installation and disable the modules that I don't use. Also, a key requirement to most of my sites is to enable an editor role so that end-users can manage their own content.

This concludes the series, Drupal 7, From the Ground Up.