Basic installation and configuration

Installation

Basic Drupal installation.

There are 2 installation profiles options available by default:

Standard
Minimal

Standard is recommended option, it pre-configures misc things like Article and Basic page content-types, a few useful text formats and so on.

Not used modules

In most cases you will not need these modules

Color
Dashboard
Overlay
Shortcut
Toolbar

Often you will not need to have Comment module installed.

You may uninstall listed modules via Drush using following commands:
drush dis -y color, comment, dashboard, overlay, shortcut, toolbar
drush pmu -y color, comment, dashboard, overlay, shortcut, toolbar

Must-have modules

In most cases you should have these modules installed.

Chaos tool suite (ctools)
At least you'll need it as dependency for some of other must-have modules.
Views
Most of listings on the site like blog, news archive, related articles, front page slideshow, etc. will be built using this module.
Token
Adds more tokens and enhances UI for core's tokens.
Pathauto
Automatically generates URL/path aliases for various kinds of content.
Global Redirect
Checks the current URL for an alias and does a 301 redirect to it if it is not being used. And not only.
Administration menu
A time-saver for site administrators, and useful for developers and site builders.
jQuery Update
Upgrades the version of jQuery in Drupal core (from 1.4.2) to a newer version of jQuery.
Module Filter
Greatly improves modules administration page.
Fast Permissions Administration
Similar to Module Filter but for permissions administration page.
Features
Exports different site building components and bundling them together in a single feature module.
Transliteration
Provides one-way string transliteration (romanization) and cleans file names during upload by replacing unwanted characters.
Devel
A suite of developer helper modules.
Strongarm
Usually used with Features to export Drupal variable values.
Block Class
Allows users to add classes to any block through the block's configuration interface.
Title
Convert node titles to the Field API in order to make nodes fully translatable.
Delta
Delta Blocks submodule exposes a number of core Drupal elements as blocks.

Good-to-have modules

You will need to have these modules installed very often.

Libraries API
The common denominator for all Drupal modules/profiles/themes that integrate with external libraries.
It's most likely that you'll have it as dependency for some other modules.
CKEditor - WYSIWYG HTML editor
Allows to replace textarea fields with the CKEditor WYSIWYG editor.
If you have rich text textarea fields then you need it.
IMCE
Image/file uploader and browser that supports personal directories and quota.
If you have CKEditor then you probably should have it as well.
IMCE Mkdir
Allows users to create and delete sub-directories under directories assigned by IMCE.
If you have IMCE then you should have this one as well.
Elysia Cron
Extends Drupal standard cron, allowing a fine grain control over each task.
Almost must-have.
Entity API
Extends the entity API of Drupal core in order to provide a unified way to deal with entities and their properties.
It's very probable that you'll have it as dependency of other modules.
Must-have if you deal with nodes and other entities in your code, or if you define your own entity types.
Entity cache
Puts core entities into Drupal's cache API.
Use with Memcache API and Integration or Redis - so if your server allows to use one of these modules then Entity cache is must-have.
Entity reference
Provides a field type that can reference arbitrary entities.
Create relations between entities (nodes, users and other). Similar References module is not recommended for use.
Rabbit Hole
Adds the ability to control what should happen when an entity is being viewed at its own page.
Useful if you have a content type that never should be displayed on its own page, like an image content type that's displayed in a carousel.
Entity view modes
Allows administrators to define custom view modes for entities.
Better Formats
Adds more flexibility to Drupal's core input format system.
Field Group
All fieldable entities will have the possibility to add groups to wrap their fields together. Comes with default HTML wrappers like vertical tabs, horizontal tabs, accordions, fieldsets or div wrappers.
Rules
Allows site administrators to define conditionally executed actions based on occurring events.
Diff
Basically shows differencies between revisions. But also very helpful for developers when dealing with Features, particularly with overriden features exports.
CAPTCHA
A challenge-response test most often placed within web forms to determine whether the user is human.
Views Bulk Operations (VBO)
Augments Views by allowing bulk operations to be executed on the displayed rows.
Administration Views
Replaces administrative overview/listing pages with actual views for superior usability.
Requires Views Bulk Operations (VBO) be installed.
Search API
Provides a framework for easily creating searches on any entity known to Drupal, using any kind of search engine. Integrated well with Views.
Recommended for building of any kind of searches on the site. Recommended for use with Search API Solr Search. Search API Database Search backed may be used as starter option.
ImageCache Actions
Provides a suite of additional image effects that can be added to image styles (watermarking, file format switcher, rounded corners, etc.). Also adds the 'duplicate', 'export' and 'import' actions to image styles administration.

Basic configuration

Title settings

In the Node group check "Title" under Automatic field replacement.

@todo Label replacement and Taxonomy term settings?

admin/config/content/title

jQuery Update

Set default jQuery version to at least 1.7 which is safe option for most of sites, newer is better.
Override default jQuery version for your admin theme - set 1.5 or even 1.4 (shipped with Drupal core). With newer versions issues in admin UI are possible.

admin/config/development/jquery_update

File system

Set some Private file system path. Make sure that Transliteration options are switched on.

@todo Disable "Transliterate the displayed file name." option?

admin/config/media/file-system

Account settings

Un-tick "Enable user pictures." option under PERSONALIZATION - in most cases you will not need it, use profiles with fields instead.

admin/config/people/accounts

@todo Is it easy enough to show pictures from profiles in comments for example?

Regional settings

Set Default country to "- None -" - initially it's safiest value, then the setting may be adjusted.
Set appropriate First day of week.
Set Default time zone to UTC.
Un-tick "Users may set their own time zone." - in most cases you will not need this.

admin/config/regional/settings

URL aliases

Empty Default path pattern in CONTENT PATHS and never set it to non-empty value.
Set appropriate Default path pattern in TAXONOMY TERM PATHS or make it empty.
Set appropriate Pattern for user account page paths in USER PATHS or make it empty.
Set empty patterns for content-types if nodes of these types should not be visible for regular users on their own pages (slidshow elements for example).
Patterns should consist of several parts separated by / sign, for example for nodes [node:content-type]/[node:title] is good candidate. Try to avoid one-part aliases, for nodes of Basic Page content-type one-part aliases are ok (about-us, contact-us, etc.).

/admin/config/search/path/settings

@todo Transliterate aliases?

admin/config/search/path/settings

Site information

Set appropriate Site name and admin@localhost.com if were not set on installation.

admin/config/system/site-information

Cron

@todo Set to "Never" on development?

admin/config/system/cron

Delta blocks

@todo TBD

People

@todo administrator/developer role

Content types

Edit Article and Basic page content types created during installation. Remove Article content-type if you don't need it. On content-type edit pages un-tick "Promoted to front page" checkbox in Publishing options group. Set other settings as needed. Give attention to Comment settings if you left the Comment module enabled because of needs and to Menu settings.

admin/structure/types
admin/structure/types/manage/article
admin/structure/types/manage/page

Replace Title property by Title field instance on the MANAGE FIELDS pages. Remove Image and Tags fields from Article content-type if needed. Adjust display settings on the MANAGE DISPLAY pages if needed.

admin/structure/types/manage/article/fields
admin/structure/types/manage/page/fields

Features

On the Features settings page set Default export path under GENERAL SETTINGS to "sites/all/modules/features".

admin/structure/features/settings

Taxonomy

Delete "Tags" vocabulary if it's not needed for you.

admin/structure/taxonomy

Views

On the Views settings page make sure the following settings are set:

Show filters on the list of views
Show advanced help warning
Always show the master display
Always show advanced display settings
Show information and statistics about the view during live preview
- Above the preview
- Show the SQL query
- Show performance statistics
- Show other queries run during render during live preview

Un-tick "Automatically update preview on changes".

admin/structure/views/settings

Development Views settings may be also set by executing of the following drush command:
drush vd

Update manager

On the Available updates settings page check the Check for updates of disabled modules and themes.

admin/reports/updates/settings

robots.txt

Add following lines to your robots.txt file:

/node/ /?q=node/

In (almost) all cases content you want to be indexed will have path aliases.