I'm reworking Drupal for Humanists using Backdrop, and I'm stumped on how to rework the section on how to find modules. As some context, many of the readers for this book are minimally- to non-technical humanities scholars.

I love the module search/installation UI, but I'm not sure how useful it is if you don't know already what you're looking for. With Drupal, searching for modules on drupal.org was practically useless: even if you put in the name of a module that existed, there was no guarantee that it'd show up towards the top of the search results. For that reason, I pointed people to Google, even if they knew the module name, and especially if they didn't.

I'm not having the same luck with Backdrop when it comes to searching Google, though maybe some of it is the smaller number of modules. (The module I use as an example in the book hasn't been ported.) Also, I tried searching backdropcms.org for "date", and got a bunch of unrelated stuff (I know Date itself is in core, but I was wondering if there were any add-ons). Searching the Backdrop module installation UI for "date" gets you a different and smaller set of things, and more relevant set, though also not ideal.

What's the best way to find modules for Backdrop, especially if you've got a general set of search terms based on your need, rather than knowing the name of an extant module?

Accepted answer

What's the best way to find modules for Backdrop, especially if you've got a general set of search terms based on your need, rather than knowing the name of an extant module?

I often still use Google, and search for a Drupal module using those terms. If i find one that looks promising, I search backdropcms.org (or the Backdrop Contrib GitHub group) for a module with the same name. 

We are currently working on improving module search, both on backdropcms.org, and in-app. See https://github.com/backdrop-ops/backdropcms.org/issues/442 for more on progress happening there. 

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drop's picture

What's the best way to find modules for Backdrop, especially if you've got a general set of search terms based on your need, rather than knowing the name of an extant module?

I often still use Google, and search for a Drupal module using those terms. If i find one that looks promising, I search backdropcms.org (or the Backdrop Contrib GitHub group) for a module with the same name. 

We are currently working on improving module search, both on backdropcms.org, and in-app. See https://github.com/backdrop-ops/backdropcms.org/issues/442 for more on progress happening there. 

Thanks! Let me know if you need help testing the search improvements?

Do you try the site search option in search engines eg imagestyle site:backdropcms.org? The existence of a domain like modules.backdropcms.org would make it easier to zoom in on them