I put together this article to show you some modules that can play an important role on your site when dealing with nodes. They are quite simple but definitely worth checking out.

Node Class

Node Class is a simple module that allows you to add custom classes to individual nodes. When creating a new node or editing an existing one, you can add additional classes to the generic ones provided by Drupal.

Similar to Block Class, a module that I covered in another article, Node Class gives you the opportunity to apply your own class definitions to each individual node. And if you are not satisfied with the generic node classes assigned by Drupal, this is a good feature.

So do check it out!

Automatic Nodetitles

Automatic Nodetitles is a simple module that let’s you create a pattern for automating the writing of titles for a certain node type. In other words, when you create a new node of a certain type, the title field gets filled in automatically with preset information.

For creating the patterns, you can use tokens and PHP. If you install the Token module, you can set the pattern using available site and contextual tokens. But if you know a bit of PHP, you have access to the $node object which you can use to generate complex and dynamic titles.

And also, you can choose to have automatic titles by default (by hiding the title field from the form), or generate them only if the title field is left empty.

It’s pretty interesting and could be handy for some cases, so do check it out.

Node clone

Node clone is a handy module that does a simple thing: it clones your nodes. It is very easy to use, all you have to do is go to a particular node and click Clone Content. This will present you with a pre-populated node form that contains the info from the node you are cloning. To make the difference, the title is preceded by the words “Clone of ”. Additionally, the authorship is set to the current user and the menu and url aliases are reset.

You can however change this behaviour in the settings. The other option for cloning makes the nodes automatically saved to the database before prompting you with the edit form of the clone. And there are some other interesting settings there you can check out.

Node Blocks

Node Blocks is a cool module that creates a block for every node of a certain type you have chosen. In other words, you can set it that all Article nodes have an equivalent block in the Drupal block system. You can then use those blocks to put them wherever you want on your site.

The cool thing is that in Drupal 7 you can choose the default View Mode to be used by the blocks to display the nodes. And even cooler is that this can be overwritten one by one in the individual block configurations. Create some useful View Modes and you are on your way.

So definitely check it out. Alternatively, you can also take a look at Node in Block for similar functionality.

Node access user reference

This is a useful one, especially for cases in which you work with a lot of content and people. What Node access user reference does is grant access to a user to the content that references it. So in other words, if you create a piece of content - which has a user reference field - and you reference a user there, this module grants that user access over this content.

The cool thing is that you can then have a piece of content where a number of users collaborate and can view/edit it, without them being necessarily of the same user role. Pretty cool so check it out. Have to mention though, you need Entity Reference or References in order to use this module - but that is only logical. And you need to set up this kind of referencing between the content and the user.

Conclusion

So there you have it - 5 modules that I thought are worth checking out. There are more though. Contrib is vast and the concerted effort of a lot of developers makes our lives much easier by providing these kinds of modules.