Drupal Enterprise: How to Add a New Drupal Module to Your Site

The University's standard Drupal installation includes a number of modules that you can enable and disable in the Drupal interface. You can view these modules under the Extend menu, where you can search and/or filter by installation status. To enable modules that are already included in the University's Drupal instance, follow these instructions.

Note: Platform modules are regularly updated by the OIT Drupal team, alleviating maintenance work for site owners and improving security via frequent updates.

Request a new platform module 

If there is a contributed module that you would like to use with your website which is not already available in the platform codebase, we suggest that you engage the platform module suggestion process. This option has multiple advantages as noted above, but can take 6-8 weeks to complete, and not all suggestions are approved. See below for an outline of the process.
 

1. Complete the Drupal support request form z.umn.edu/drupalsupportrequest
   1. Select Request support for an existing site
   2. Under Work Requested, select Platform Module Suggestion
   3. In the Additional Information field, summarize the module's functionality and your use case. 
2. The Drupal support team will review your request. We may suggest an alternate module, in particular if we already have a different module that we think will meet your needs that is already available on the platform. Below are some of the factors we consider when reviewing a module:
   1. Does it have a stable release that is covered by the Drupal Security Advisory policy? This is a requirement for further consideration.
   2. Does it duplicate functionality of another module already included in the platform? In this event, we will suggest the alternate module and confirm if the other one will meet your use case. 
   3. Is it well-maintained?
   4. Is it widely used?
   5. Does it potentially have frontend or backend accessibility implications? In this case we will consult the Office of Digital Accessibility and request that they test the module.
   6. This list is not exhaustive, and there may be other cases where we feel the need to consult with other stakeholders such as University Relations or University Information Security when reviewing the module.
3. If the module passes this initial review process, it will be brought forward for a vote at the next Drupal Advisory Board meeting. If approved by a majority of board members, the OIT Drupal team will add the module during an upcoming platform code release.
4. Once the module has been pushed out to your site, you can enable the module via your website admin interface.

Add a new module via your website Github repository

If you wish to install a new module on your site that is not included in the platform codebase, you first need to add it to your Github repository. After that, code must be deployed to the respective environment in order for the new module to show up on your site. We recommend you first add the module to your dev environment and ensure it works as expected before adding it to your production environment.

Add the module to your website code repository

1. Download and unzip the module file into a module_name folder, where module_name is the name specific to the module you are working with, and branch_name is the name of the branch in your repo that is associated with the environment in which you want to install the module (i.e. develop and master).
2. In a terminal:
   1. Clone your repository into a local_folder, where local_folder is the name you have chosen for your repository's local location.To get the SSH clone URL open the repository in a web browser and copy the SSH clone URL from the box on the right side.
      git clone -b [branch_name] [SSH_clone_URL] [local_folder]
   2. Copy the downloaded module_name folder to the modules/contrib folder in local_folder.
   3. Stage the copied folder to be added to your repository.
      git add modules/contrib/[module_name]
   4. Commit the module to your local repository
      git commit -m "Adding module [module_name]"
   5. Push the changes to the remote github.umn.edu server into the branch you are currently working on.
      git push origin [branch_name]
   6. Verify the changes are in your repository by going to [SSH_clone_URL] in your web browser
3. You can deploy code to your dev/stg environments via your site node on drupalmanagement.umn.edu. When you have merged your code changes and are ready to deploy to production, use the Drupal Support Request form to request a production code deployment.

Troubleshooting

If you do not see a modules folder in your local repository, make sure you have set up your repository to work with UMN Drupal Enterprise.